Fox Business host Larry Kudlow didn’t hold back on a recent segment of his show and told his audience the full extent of the Biden Administration’s failing economic policies.
In part of the segment, Kudlow gives an insight into the latest Fox News poll numbers which show waning confidence in the President’s ability to lead an economic recovery.
He also refuted a common talking point the left often uses about wealthy individuals and major corporations not paying their fair share of taxes.
Notably, Kudlow actually agreed on a few observations recently made by resident Biden about issues plaguing the nation – before highlighting the fact that Biden’s own policies have led to the problems he wants to solve.
A U.S. senator Friday spoke out against the “woke” policies implemented by the military, which has become especially apparent during LGBT Pride Month of June.
“The United States military should be focused on one objective – creating the most lethal fighting force on planet Earth,” Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) told The TennesseeStar. “Instead, Joe Biden’s military leaders are secretly attempting to turn our brave warfighters into social justice warriors. Communist China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea do not care how woke our military is or what our soldiers’ pronouns are.“
She echoed a similar sentiment on Twitter.
“The Biden Defense Department should focus energy on combatting our adversaries — not wokeism,” she said.
Communist China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea do not care what our soldiers’ pronouns are.
The U.S. Air Force celebrated Pride Month with a message of its own on Twitter.
“Pride in all who serve,” the military branch said, attaching a photo of its members running alongside a pride flag.
Many Twitter users were quick to criticize the Air Force for the post, noting that there is not an American flag in the photo.
The Department of Defense’s Inspector General’s [DOGIG] office celebrated Pride Month on Friday, too.
“The [DODIG] recognizes June 2022 as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ+) Pride Month. During Pride Month, we commemorate the achievements and contributions of the LGBTQ+ community, to include service in defense of our Nation,” that office said.
The @DoD_IG recognizes June 2022 as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ+) Pride Month. During Pride Month, we commemorate the achievements and contributions of the LGBTQ+ community, to include service in defense of our Nation. pic.twitter.com/K69xtRi6EM— DoD Inspector General (@DoD_IG) June 17, 2022
The Department of Defense (DOD) itself, the parent organization of America’s military branches, sent out a June 7 press release officially recognizing Pride Month.
“DOD is committed to ensuring and promoting an atmosphere of dignity and respect for all civilian and military personnel,” Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen H. Hicks said. “We strive to make the Department of Defense a workplace of choice for all Americans willing and qualified to serve. In doing so, we set a bedrock foundation where all personnel are valued and given an equal opportunity to succeed.”
The governing body for international swimming approved new policies for transgender swimmers that will go into effect starting on June 20.
In a notice (pdf) on June 19, the International Swimming Federation (FINA) said it will only allow biological male swimmers to compete in women’s events if they have not experienced male puberty and have had puberty suppressed before age 12. They would also have to “continuously [maintain] their testosterone levels in serum (or plasma) below 2.5 nmol/L.”
About 72 percent of FINA members voted in favor of the directive to restrict the participation of transgender athletes in elite women’s competitions and create an “open” category for them.
The debate intensified after University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas, a biological male who publicly identifies as a female, became the first transgender NCAA champion in women’s Division I history after winning the women’s 500-yard freestyle earlier this year. The win drew significant backlash from female swimmers,activists, and other athletes, including Thomas’s teammates.
In an interview with Sports Illustrated last month, Thomas expressed the intention to seek a spot on the national women’s swimming team before the 2024 Olympics. The new FINA rule issued on June 19 would block Thomas’s participation.
The new eligibility policy for FINA-backed competitions says that biological male athletes are eligible to compete in women’s sports only if “they can establish to FINA’s comfortable satisfaction that they have not experienced any part of male puberty beyond Tanner Stage 2 (of puberty) or before age 12, whichever is later,” according to the notice. The governing body added that biological women who claim to be men can fully compete in men’s swimming events.
The organization heard from several doctors and scientists who argued that puberty gives a clear physical advantage to males over females.
“By 14 years or older, the difference between boys and girls is substantial. That’s due to the advantages experienced due to the physiological adaptations in testosterone and the possession of the Y chromosome,” physiologist Dr. Sandra Hunter said. “Some of these physical advantages are structural in origin such as height, limb length, heart size, lung size and they will be retained, even with the suppression or reduction of testosterone that occurs in the transition from male to female.”
FINA President Husain Al-Musallam in a statement that the governing body has “to protect competitive fairness at our events, especially the women’s category at FINA competitions.”
He added that its newly created “open category will mean that everybody has the opportunity to compete at an elite level.”
“This has not been done before, so FINA will need to lead the way. I want all athletes to feel included in being able to develop ideas during this process,” he said.
Sharron Davies, who won a swimming silver medal at the 1980 Olympic Games, welcomed the decision.
“I can’t tell you how proud I am of my sport, FINA, and the FINA president for doing the science, asking the athletes/coaches, and standing up for fair sport for females,” Davies said, adding that “fairness is the cornerstone of sport.”
The NCAA said in January that it would enable “a sport-by-sport approach to transgender participation,” or participation by athletes who claim to be a gender that doesn’t match their biological sex.
The Left is once again attacking our country’s most vulnerable – children outside the protection of their parents.
A school district in Arizona has been using a worksheet with young students that is making them question their heterosexual identity. The school program in which it is being used claims to “promote leadership and diversity,” but it is really just a cover to teach young kids gender identity and sexuality. Just take a look at this:
The students are being asked what they think “caused” their heterosexuality, whether they just need “a good gay/lesbian lover,” and whether their heterosexuality is just “a phase.” These are totally inappropriate questions for our children and an obvious attempt to push the Left’s woke gender ideology on them. These attacks on our most vulnerable must end NOW!
Parents of young children everywhere need a fighter in Congress, and you can rest assured that I will always stand up for America’s kids. I am standing up to the Radical Left trying to indoctrinate our kids, but I need to know I have YOU on my team!
An excerpt from Matt Walsh’s new book, ‘What Is a Woman?’
The following is an excerpt from Matt Walsh’s new book, What Is a Woman? One Man’s Journey to Answer the Question of a Generation, an investigation into the radical gender ideology movement. The passage is taken from Chapter 5, “The Transgender Takeover.”
***
Transgenderism has taken the (western) world by storm, and there’s no medium where we aren’t confronted with it, often on a daily basis. While this appears to have happened rather rapidly, pressure had been building for quite some time.
In the early 1950s, a former GI from the Bronx who renamed himself Christine Jorgensen went to Copenhagen, Denmark, received a sex change surgery and massive doses of estrogen, and became the first international transgender media sensation. Three wire services together sent out a sum total of 50,000 words on the Jorgensen story in the first two weeks of coverage. While Alfred Kinsey and John Money conducted their experiments and the ideas behind sex change surgery and gender theory spread through academia, society at large took passing interest in the transgender issue after Jorgensen. One could be forgiven for living life in the mid 20th century without worrying if your daughter would come home and announce she is actually a man. It was a simpler time. Jorgensen was a media sensation, but like all media sensations, he was soon forgotten.
In the 1970s, the controversy over Renee Richards broke onto the scene, presaging debates we are still embroiled in today. Renee Richards was a tennis player who underwent a sex change and proposed that, as a result, he was a woman. As Dr. Bowers recounted to me, “Renee Richards was a competitive tennis player who was assigned male at birth, went through a transition, and when her [sic] situation was found out, the women in the U.S. tennis circuit were very upset, thinking that she [sic] had a competitive advantage, and [they] tried to block her [sic] from competing.”
Renee’s case went all the way up to the New York State Supreme Court, which ruled in his favor, writing that forcing Renee to take a Barr body test to determine his sex before being eligible to compete was “grossly unfair, discriminatory and inequitable, and violative of her [sic] rights under the Human Rights Law of this state.”
After that, it was yet again largely quiet on the western front until all of a sudden the trans movement stopped making splashes in the headlines and began to form a tidal wave that would wash over society. In 2008, the reality show “America’s Next Top Model” featured a transgender character, normalizing transgenderism with regular appearances on many Americans’ TV diets. A few years later, Bruce Jenner was reborn as “Caitlyn.” Vanity Fair ran a flattering cover story, and nearly every media outlet in America praised him as a hero. Soon after, the Obama administration lifted the ban on transgender service members in the military (a ban that President Trump reinstated and resident Biden lifted yet again).
Transgenderism was moving from sideshow to the main stage, and now it’s in absolutely every sphere of life. There’s no avoiding it. Transgenderism is the heart of the cultural conversation in America, and the only escape is death or becoming Amish.
In the movie industry, Amazon Prime produced a remake of the classic Cinderella, casting the fairy godmother as transgender. In the Marvel Universe—which produces the biggest blockbuster hits today—Disney (which owns Marvel) announced that there would soon be a transgender superhero.
Television boasts its own array of transgender characters. The hit show Glee on Fox introduced a transgender character as far back as 2012. A series called Transparent about a father of three grown children announcing he is transgender ran for five seasons until 2019. Orange is the New Black on Netflix featured a trans character played by an actual trans actor, Laverne Cox. Netflix is reportedly introducing its first non-binary (meaning not following the “binaries” of male or female) character in a series for preschool children.
The celebrity world is filling up with a sizeable collection of trans or non-binary personas from Chaz Bono to the creators of The Matrix, the Wachowski brothers (now proclaimed “sisters”), to actress, singer/songwriter Demi Lovato. Lovato—a former Disney child star—is a self-anointed prophet of the sexual anarchy pioneered by Kinsey and Money. One of her Instagram posts in 2021 read, “Be a slut. Show your body. Get naked. Have all the safe, different, consensual sex you want. Be kinky. Masturbate. Make/watch porn. Make money. Just a reminder that being sexual is okay.”
Lest you worry that only adults and former Disney child stars are in on the fun, Desmond is Amazing is a prepubescent drag queen who was featured glowingly in a segment on Good Morning America. His abuse-courting parents also allowed him to dance at a Brooklyn gay club while grown men tossed dollar bills at him. Of course, no cell phones were allowed while he danced for the men at the bar.
Even if you aren’t a pop culture junky, it’s impossible to get by watching the news over the past few years without enduring a continual parade of transgender “firsts.” Rachel Levine was confirmed as the first transgender cabinet secretary, and he now runs the Department of Health and Human Services charged with managing health policies governing, among other issues, Medicare, Obamacare, and the coronavirus. We’ve had our first transgender Rhodes Scholar, our first transgender boy scout, our first transgender national political party convention speaker, and even our first high-profile transgender government leaker and whistleblower in the person of Chelsea Manning. The amount of history being made is just staggering.
Drag Queen Story Hour swept across the country as frighteningly dressed and confused men (generally) with a strange affection for young children formed chapters and invaded local libraries across the country. Human Resource specialists and allies everywhere have taken it upon themselves to announce their preferred pronouns in emails and everyday conversations at work and in social gatherings. You can be sure if you refuse to do the same, your lack of inclusivity will be noted.
Even having a baby has become another avenue for the pervasive touch of gender theory. Hardly a hospital in America has blue or pink blankets and caps for tiny newborns anymore. They are either a mixture of pink and blue—or lack the colors at all—apparently in an effort to save that puffy-eyed nugget of a baby from having a gender imposed on her at any point in time.
There is no escape. Maybe you’ve already had your kids, and you’re not having any more. Maybe you work from home or for yourself, and you even homeschool your kids. Maybe you’ve already cut the cord on the television, deleted the social media apps, and the only celebrities you can name are Elvis Presley, John Wayne, Audrey Hepburn, and Mickey Mouse. Well, that doesn’t stop the parents down the street from engaging in the hot new trend of raising their children Zyler and Kadyn as genderless or genderfluid. (Zyler and Kadyn, by the way, are actual twin children in Cambridge, Massachusetts, whose parents are raising them without gender so that the children can decide for themselves when they’re older.)
You don’t just have to worry about your kids. When was the last time you had a real conversation with your spouse about gender identity? When I spoke with Dr. Bowers, I asked him how his family dealt with his transition, seeing as he was married and had kids at the time. “If you marry someone who is your best friend, they’re likely to understand you, and they’re likely to be with you in the long run,” Dr. Bowers said. “We’re still married legally,” Dr. Bowers said of his wife, “but I wouldn’t call it a marriage. I would call it more like a modern family.”
“Is your experience typical, where the spouse is supportive?” I asked.
“Increasingly so,” he said. “I think as trans as a phenomenon has emerged and become, you know, more acceptable, spouses go along for the ride.” He continued, “If somebody is not a great spouse, whether male or female, and you add this into the mix, you’re likely to create problems. But if you have someone who you’ve been friends with and you have mutual respect for, you know, it often remains.” Got it. So if your spouse declares that he or she is the opposite sex and the marriage breaks down, it’s really your fault for not accepting it. There were probably already problems with you in the first place.
Matt Walsh is a writer at the Daily Wire. His book, What Is a Woman?, was published this month by DW Books. A companion documentary of the same title was also released in June.
Schools are adopting programs tied to “Comprehensive Sex Ed” and others that are teaching a hyper-sexualized narrative on gender and personal relationships. Behind these programs is a system that is pulling children from the authority of their parents, and exposing them to direct lines of communication with adults on sexual platforms. Children who refuse the new sexual and political narratives face various forms of racial and sexual discrimination, and parents who refuse to acknowledge the sexual narratives can be accused of “spiritual abuse.” According to Brenda Lebsack, a teacher of 30 years and a former school board member for Orange Unified School District, these programs equate to the grooming of children and are part of a broader agenda.
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A lawsuit has been filed against a California school district and staff accused of coaching a middle school student into thinking she was transgender and secretly changing her name and pronouns at school.
The lawsuit alleges school staff manipulated the sixth-grade student into “believing she was bisexual and that her gender did not match her biological sex” and instructed her “not to tell her [mother] about the new gender identity and expression.”
Harmeet Dhillon, CEO of the Center for American Liberty, which is representing the minor student and her mother, told The Epoch Times the case could be the first of many exposing the consequences of transgender activism in schools.
The lawsuit, filed on June 14, names Spreckels Union School District, Katelyn Pagaran, the principal at Buena Vista Middle School in Salinas, Calif., and two teachers: Lori Caldeira and Kelly Baraki as defendants.
Jessica Konen, the child’s mother, came forward after a leaked audio recording revealed Caldeira and Baraki telling other teachers about how they secretly recruited students into the school’s LGBT club.
Jessica Konen, the mother of a child who was allegedly coached into a transgender identity at school in Salinas, Calif. (Courtesy of Trevor Lewis)
The teachers bragged about spying on students’ online searches and activity as well as eavesdropping on their conversations to identify and recruit sixth-grade students into the LGBT clubs whose membership rolls were kept hidden from parents.
“We totally stalked what they were doing on Google,” Baraki said in the recording.
The duo led a workshop called “How We Run a ‘GSA’ in Conservative Communities” at a California Teachers Association (CTA) conference billed as the “2021 LGBTQ+ Issues Conference, Beyond the Binary: Identity & Imagining Possibilities” in Palm Springs last October. They described the hurdles they encountered as teachers to conceal the activities of the GSA (Gay-Straight Alliance) “Equality Club” from parents.
New details have surfaced in the case now that Konen’s daughter, who is protected under the pseudonym “A.G.” in the lawsuit because she is a minor, is actively participating in the case, Dhillon said.
The lawsuit alleges that the teachers acted with principal Pagaran’s knowledge.
“Pagaran was aware of the Equality Club and Caldeira’s and Baraki’s tactics … and approved of them. In fact, Pagaran frequently attended Equality Club meetings,” the lawsuit states.
It also alleges that Baraki and Caldeira tried to push identities on students that they resisted.
Near the beginning of the 2018 school year, when the student was 11 years old, she was invited by a friend to attend an Equality Club meeting but was not interested in the discussion and decided not to return, according to the lawsuit.
About two weeks later, Caldeira approached Konen’s daughter and asked her to come back to the club, saying that she “fit in perfectly,” and the child obliged, the lawsuit alleges.
A file photo of El Segundo High School in El Segundo, Calif., on July 28, 2020. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)
In the spring of 2019, Konen’s daughter told a school counselor she was depressed and began attending weekly counseling sessions, after which “Caldeira and Pagaran would often have follow-up meetings with [her] and the school counselor,” the lawsuit states. “During those meetings, the counselor and Caldeira informed [the child] that the feelings she was having were because she was ‘not being who she was’ and that if she became her ‘true self,’ her depression and stress would be better (or words to that effect).”
Caldeira encouraged Konen’s daughter to change her name to a boy’s name, and she began wearing boy’s clothing, the lawsuit further alleges.
“Sometimes, Caldeira and Baraki would introduce and push identities on students, and the students resisted,” states the lawsuit.
Before attending a school board meeting in mid-December to expose the alleged manipulation her daughter had endured, Konen went public with her story and accused school staff, including the two teachers, of “coaching” her daughter.
The Center for American Liberty filed a notice of claim under the Government Claims Act, a prerequisite to filing a lawsuit against the California government, on Jan. 19. The state had 60 days to respond, but did not do so.
“For me, as a civil rights lawyer, I think adults should be allowed to do whatever they want, and if they want to express themselves that way after full information, then that’s their right. But, people are not getting the full information about this radical transgender agenda,” Dhillon said.
Human rights lawyer Harmeet Dhillon. (Courtesy of Trevor Lewis)
“They’re not learning about the permanent effects of these changes. They’re not learning that their sadness and their depression is never going to go away. In the process, American school teachers are actively interfering with the civil rights of American families. And so, we intend through this lawsuit and others … to put a stop to this before they permanently damage and scar more children and destroy more lives.”
Dhillon disagrees with President Joe Biden’s recent push for “gender-affirming care” and state legislation proposed by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and Assemblywoman Lori Wilson (D-Suisun City) to harbor transgender-affirming parents who’ve been charged with child abuse in other states.
Some treatments, such as puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, used to treat minors who identify as trans have not been properly medically tested for use on children, Dhillon alleged.
“The use of puberty blockers on children is not on label. It is not tested,” she said. “They’re using drugs meant for other diseases like prostate cancer. They’re using that to suppress hormones in American children.
“This is barbaric,” Dhillon continued. “When we see other countries mutilate the genitalia of girls and boys, we call that ‘barbaric.’ We call for human rights sanctions on those countries. We’re doing that in America under the guise of ‘gender affirming care.’”
Decisions on transgender medicine are best left to adults—patients who are 18 and older—and can legally make those decisions for themselves, she said.
“I think it will be sad if they do that, but I have no problem with it legally. I have a huge problem, legally, with parents being alienated from the children,” Dhillon said.
Schools hiding the gender identities of children from their parents is not only problematic, but it is illegal, “and we will show that in this lawsuit,” she said.
University’s approach to Kevin Kruse provides stark contrast to its treatment of Joshua Katz
Princeton University learned in December about plagiarism allegations against one of its star progressive professors, emails obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show, but it does not appear to have taken action against him in the intervening six months.
On Dec. 6, the economic historian Phillip Magness emailed Princeton’s dean of faculty, Gene Jarrett, with evidence that Princeton historian Kevin Kruse plagiarized several passages of his 2015 book One Nation Under God.
“I am sharing this information in the interest of academic integrity,” Magness wrote. The email contained detailed comparisons between Kruse’s book and a 1956 New York Times article from which Kruse appears to have lifted passages without attribution.
The university never replied to Magness’s email, Magness told the Free Beacon, and has not announced an investigation of Kruse. Jarrett did not respond to a request for comment.
The university’s treatment of Kruse—a historian known for his searing criticism of conservative media—contrasts sharply with its scorched-earth approach to Joshua Katz, the classics professor who was fired last month after raising hell over the school’s racial politics.
That contrast raises questions about political double standards at the Ivy League university, which has denied that its firing of Katz had anything to do with ideology.
Katz was a Princeton pariah: His biting criticism of the school’s political correctness drew flak from students, faculty, and staff, including Princeton president Christopher Eisgruber. The university even condemned Katz as a racist in its 2021 freshman orientation programming, doctoring one of his quotes to make him seem racially insensitive. It began investigating him within a month of receiving “new information” about a consensual relationship he had with a student in 2007, for which he had already been punished in 2018.
Kruse, on the other hand, is a darling of the online left. He frequently posts Twitter threads debunking conservative “lies” and, in 2017, mocked a member of the Trump administration for plagiarizing his master’s thesis.
“We’d expel a student who pulled this,” Kruse tweeted.
Kruse may have plagiarized his own thesis, Magness argued in a June 14 Reason article, on top of his 2015 book. Passages in Kruse’s 2000 doctoral dissertation are almost indistinguishable from those in two 1996 monographs: Race and the Shaping of Twentieth-Century Atlanta by Ronald Bayor and The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit by Thomas Sugrue.
Magness highlighted these similarities in another email to Princeton on June 7, this time addressed to the dean of research, Pablo Debenedetti. Debenedetti replied that he forwarded the email to Jarrett’s office, which never circled back to Magness.
Plagiarism is a “very serious charge at Princeton,” the school’s academic integrity policies state. “It can result in disciplinary probation, suspension, or expulsion.”
The U.S. education system appears to have been hijacked by people with a specific agenda. Actual education has been replaced by indoctrination, teachers replaced by activists pushing nefarious agendas.
However, all is not lost. More and more Americans are speaking up against the madness. They have had enough. According to the latest University of Massachusetts Amherst Poll, an increasing number of Americans want the insanity, or the slide into insanity, to stop—and they want it to stop now.
The vast majority of respondents stated that teachers asking children in grades K-6 for their preferred gender pronouns was wrong. The vast majority also said they were against the idea of assigning children in grades K-6 books that discuss transgender issues. They also opposed the idea of teachers discussing their sexual orientation with young children.
Commenting on the poll, author Don Surber had this to say: “LGBT classes are indoctrination, not education.” The same could be said about CRT classes. As Surber noted, although “CRT proponents claim this is only taught in college, they should have no problem with banning teaching a racist and anti-American doctrine that seeks to discredit the Constitution.” But, for some strange reason, “proof of CRT instruction in schools keeps popping up.”
Surber finished by asking a pertinent question: “If so many people oppose teaching CRT and LGBT, why are these subjects being taught in public schools?”
Signs against critical race theory in front of the Loudoun County School Administration building in Virginia on Nov. 9, 2021. (Terri Wu/The Epoch Times)
He’s right. How did we get here?
I’ll tell you how. Last year, in an article for The American Mind, I discussed something called the gated institutional narrative (GIN), a concept first put forward by the polymath Eric Weinstein. The GIN perfectly encapsulates the madness that has swept, and continues to sweep, through the U.S. education system.
As I said at the time, the “GIN explains the ways in which heavily filtered information is presented to the public by the mainstream media and academics.” Take the New York Times’ “1619 Project,” for example. Although the project has been lambasted by highly-respected commentators, it still, for some unfathomable reason, carries a great deal of authority.
On closer inspection, however, the reason it carries so much authority is entirely understandable. After all, the project was initiated by the NY Times, one of the most influential papers on the planet. Additionally, its historically inaccurate narrative has been pushed by comparably powerful outlets, frequently and forcefully. Furthermore, it appeals not to facts, but to feelings. In this age of speaking “your truth” instead of the truth, the NY Times decided to tell its “truth.”
The GIN, as I said in The American Mind piece, “is like an exclusive nightclub. Only the right kind of people can enter.” Orthodox thinkers—in other words, people willing to follow the herd—are the only people permitted entry. Those who refuse to comply are quickly turned away. “Go away and sober up,” they’re told.
Boxes of donated LGBT books sit stacked on the playground at Nystrom Elementary School in Richmond, Calif., on May 17, 2022. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Bad ideas beget bad ideas—the inaccurate (often pernicious) ideas generated within the GIN bounce around in a gigantic echo chamber. Then, like a swift missile strike, they’re launched into broader society.
At the same time, good ideas—that is, ideas that counter the bad ones created within the system—are intentionally blocked from entering. With such a design, it’s easy to see how bad ideas, even wicked ones, continue to circulate and become more virulent in nature.
Bad Ideas Spread Like a Virus
In his latest book, aptly titled “The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense,” Dr. Gad Saad discusses how bad ideas, or “idea pathogens,” spread like a virus, killing common sense in the process. In the American education system, as you’re no doubt aware, commonsense is in short supply.
If in doubt, let me point you in the direction of a recent piece written by Jonathan Turley, one of the country’s leading legal scholars. Unlike so many involved in academia, Turley has a backbone. He has a significant voice and is not afraid to use it. Instead of echoing the narratives of the GIN, Turley exposes the absurdities occurring within the gated community.
In the insular world of academia, he noted, “there have been growing controversies over language guides and usages, including the use of pronouns that some object to as matters of religion or grammar.” Now he warned, the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), “the largest association of science teachers in the world,” wants to add to the controversy.
Take a read of the NSTA’s latest guide, and you’ll quickly see that Turley’s concerns are very much warranted. The educators are now pushing for “gender-inclusive biology.” What, you’re probably wondering, could this new-age biology entail?
In short, unscientific calls to permanently abandon everyday terms like “men,” “women,” “parent,” “mother,” and “father.” Mothers, according to the guide, should only be referred to as “persons with ovaries.” Fathers, meanwhile, should be referred to as “persons with testes.”
Although tens of millions of Americans have had enough, don’t expect the GIN to stop churning out bad ideas anytime soon.
More than half of state attorneys general rejected an “unlawful” Biden administration memorandum, which prevented students from receiving federal funding for public school lunches if their district didn’t comply with LGBT mandates.
In a letter to the president, 26 Republican attorneys general demanded the Biden administration withdraw its Department of Agriculture’s Title IX interpretation, which will take billions of dollars in National School Lunch Program funding away from schools that don’t let biological males use the girls’ bathroom or compete in girls’ sports. The department’s interpretation violated the Administrative Procedures Act, since it was issued as a memorandum rather than a proposed rule for the public to comment on, the attorneys general wrote.
The Biden administration has a history of going around the public when issuing policies, Matt Bowman, a senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, told the Washington Free Beacon. Before the Supreme Court blocked it in January, a mandate without public comment from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration required that workers at businesses with 100 or more employees get vaccinated or submit a negative COVID test weekly.
With the exception of New Hampshire attorney general John Formella, every Republican attorney general joined the coalition, which is led by Tennessee attorney general Herbert Slatery.
The coalition is “evaluating all options to stop this federal overreach,” a spokeswoman for Arizona attorney general Mark Brnovich (R.) told the Free Beacon. He said “a federal government bully is more than any child or school should have to contend with.” Florida attorney general Ashley Moody (R.) criticized the Biden administration for “using hungry children to advance a political agenda.”
Approximately 30 million students benefit from the National School Lunch Program.
‘Drag queens—not only are they not hurting our kids—drag queens make everything better,’ said state AG Dana Nessel
Michigan attorney general Dana Nessel (D.) said Wednesday that drag queens ought to be in every school.
Nessel, who is best known for passing out drunk in the stands after two Bloody Marys at the 2021 Michigan-Michigan State football game, admitted she did not poll-test the idea before floating it at a civil rights conference in Lansing.
“A drag queen for every school! That is what would be fun for the kids and lift them up when they are having emotional issues,” Nessel said. “Drag queens—not only are they not hurting our kids—drag queens make everything better! Drag queens are fun.”
The attorney general made the remarks by way of saying she doesn’t understand why the electorate is deeply divided over social issues. She said that state leaders should ignore “wedge issues” and come together in pursuit of common goals, such as education and health care.
Nessel’s “drag queens for any age” platform is a marked contrast with states like Texas and Florida, where exposing children to pornified dancers giving lewd performances can trigger a child abuse investigation.
Her comments also stand in contrast with her sprawling probe of sex abuse in the Catholic Church. Nessel’s long-running investigation, which covers allegations going back decades, has netted fewer than a dozen indictments. And the probe is larger than her office’s investigation of Michigan State University and Dr. Larry Nasser, the physician who assaulted over 250 young girls in his role as team doctor for the U.S. women’s gymnastics team, according to the Detroit News.
Nessel is seeking a second term this November. Her Republican challenger, Kalamazoo lawyer Matthew DePerno, said the comments show her unfitness for office.
“Students in the third grade are behind on their reading, our test scores are some of the worst in the country thanks to these disastrous COVID lockdowns, and she calls for drag shows for Kindergarteners,” DePerno said.
As parents across the nation fight to have a say in their children’s public education, more are taking things into their own hands: running for local school boards.
Sean Kaufman in Woodstock, Georgia, is one of them. And his journey began with a school assignment on the American dream.
Before that, he never felt any reason to question what schools were teaching his children, and he would always check on whether his kids had done what their teachers had asked them to do.
“It was this ultimate trust [in the school system],” said the father of three, a small business owner and part-time professor at a local university.
During the pandemic, however, the virtual learning in public schools allowed him a closer look at what his children were learning.
In November 2020, his middle child Aiden, then a junior at the Woodstock High School, got an assignment in his advanced placement (AP) English class to write a paper on whether the American dream was dead or alive. He was also assigned to peer review two other students’ essays.
“Every single child wrote the American dream was dead. And that really bothered me,” Kaufman told The Epoch Times about the three papers he read.
While Aiden wrote that the American dream was “dwindling” and “unable to be fulfilled by the current American society,” his classmates described the ideal in their essays as a “delusion,” “fallacy,” and a “broken dream.”
One cited George Floyd’s death as the reason the American dream was “an illusion” and “broken.” The 46-year-old black man died after a police officer held his knee on Floyd’s back and neck while pinned to the ground in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in May 2020. His death prompted mass demonstrations across the globe as protestors called for racial justice.
Kaufman asked his son why wrote the essay in that way.
“Dad, it’s easier,” replied Aiden. “They [the teacher] give you argumentative papers [papers provided for background]. Three say the American dream is dead, and one says it’s kind of alive.” And according to Aiden, if he “went along” with the main theme that the American dream was dead, the teacher wouldn’t ask him to defend his position.
Sean Kaufman (2nd R) with wife Jacqueline and sons Sean Patrick (L) and Aiden, and daughter Jamielynn (Courtesy of Sean Kaufman)
Kaufman thought his public health students at the Kennesaw State University might know more than high schoolers.
During the same week, he conducted an ad hoc survey in class, “How many of you believe the American dream is dead?” He asked his class of about 25 students.
“Ninety percent raised their hands,” said Kaufman. “I was just blown away.”
He asked his college students what the American dream was. Not getting an answer, he defined it for them, “The American dream is, in this country, if you work hard, you sacrifice, and you never quit, you will find some type of success in your life.”
After giving the students his definition, he tried again, “How many of you still believe the American dream is dead?”
Still, 90 percent raised their hands.
“If you believe the American dream is dead in this country, why are you sitting in a college classroom?” he asked. The class was silent. Students looked shocked, and one said he hadn’t thought about that.
To Kaufman, associating the death of George Floyd with the end of the American dream reflects a tenet of critical race theory (CRT). “CRT believes that everywhere you are, the system is rigged against persons of color.”
CRT is a quasi-Marxist framework that argues that America is systematically racist. Supporters say it’s a college-level theory course not taught in K-12 public schools, yet critics beg to differ.
Kaufman is not alone in Georgia in believing in the American dream.
In a June 2021 poll, eighty-one percent of voters in Georgia agreed with the following statement: “Children should never be taught that their destiny and inherent value depends on their skin color. Instead, American schools should be teaching American children about the American Dream that is available to them.” The Georgia statewide survey was conducted by Heritage Action for America, the grassroots and advocacy arm of the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation.
The percentages of agreement in Democrat, independent, and Republican groups were 62, 85, and 97, respectively. The survey’s sample size was 600, with 38 percent Democrats, 15 percent independents, and 41 percent Republicans.
Running for School Board and Raising Awareness
Fast forward to this February, an 11th-grade English language arts class assignment prompted Kaufman to file a formal lesson challenge and speak at the Cherokee County School Board meeting.
The assignment asked students to read the book “Desiree’s Baby” by 19th-century American author Kate Chopin and write an extended ending. Students should “stay true to the tenet of the literary period” and write in the original third-person point of view or as any of the characters.
In the short story written in 1893, Desiree, abandoned as a baby and raised by a wealthy family in Louisiana, married Armond, a son of a plantation owner. When it turned out that their baby’s skin was black, Armond blamed Desiree for being part black and drove her away. However, when burning Desiree’s belongings, he came across a letter between his parents that revealed the secret they kept from him: he was the one who was part black.
Many students wrote from the perspective of Armond, according to Kaufman.
He quoted one such writing during his speech at the February school board meeting, “Surrounding me were the negroes fueling the fire, their skin now a reminder that I was part of who they were. I felt a horrid disgust inside of me. Oh, how I wished my skin would melt from my bones; I could never be one of them.”
“What benefit is there, in my opinion, to make a child write as though he is a racist, bigoted slave owner hundreds of years later?” asked Kaufman.
In response to his challenge, the school’s English department formed a review committee with members from the administration, professional learning community, and instruction personnel. A month later, the committee recommended the continuation of the assignment because students could choose any character’s point of view for their writing. It also suggested offering alternative assignments and hiding students’ names on papers during peer review at parents’ request.
Kaufman didn’t think alternative assignments were the solution. And he didn’t believe the school board listened. Hence, he decided to run for the school board to become a voice for change.
And no surprise, CRT is front and center in his first attempt at public service.
Unlike in most states, some of Georgia’s school board elections are partisan. Kaufman was up against two other Republican candidates, Erin Ragsdale and Eric Richards, in the primary on May 24. The Republican incumbent didn’t run this time. None of the candidates got over half of the votes. Therefore, a runoff was scheduled for June 21, with early voting between June 13 and 17. The runoff winner will face the Democrat primary winner on Nov. 8.
Kaufman finished second at the primary last month, earning him a seat in the runoff. A total of 6,493 votes were cast in the Republican primary, compared to 1,392 votes in the Democrat primary with only one candidate.
Kaufman’s opponent Ragsdale, a pediatric speech-language pathologist, runs on “making the best [school district] even better.” She promised “continued support” of the district’s decision to ban CRT on her website.
In May 2021, the county school district passed a resolution prohibiting the implementation of CRT. Kaufman said that many voters were thus confused and didn’t know that, although banned, CRT had been integrated into the schools’ teaching.
“You integrate theory into class; you don’t teach the theory,” he said. “When people say, ‘CRT is not being taught,’ it’s a lie.”
He said Democrats voted for his opponent because she wouldn’t change the status quo much. Primaries are open in Georgia, meaning voters can cross party lines to vote. The Epoch Times has reached out to Ragsdale for comment.
“I love our children. Our children are born the way that they are born, and the way they are born is beautiful. They are perfect,” he said, explaining his determination to get CRT out of the county schools. “And to tell a child that the way they are born and the color of their skin dictates who they will be in this life, whether they will be an oppressed or an oppressor?
“It breaks my heart.”
After the primary, Richards, who ranked last, endorsed Kaufman. He had run his race on similar stances. If Kaufman can get the votes that previously supported Richards, he may reach the majority and defeat Ragsdale in the runoff. To achieve that, he has continued to post videos on social media, go door to door, and send mailers and text messages.
“Every vote in runoff counts. Every vote,” he said. “It’s going to be decided very very closely. And I’m praying that Eric Richards’ voters get behind me.”
However, losing the runoff wouldn’t mean the end of his efforts. He said he wanted to be the voice that brought about the change, “I have raised awareness in over 2,000 people in my community.”
“That’s 2,000 people that believe and have been wakened and will continue to fight beside me as we continue to try and increase awareness about what’s happening in our community,” he added.
Sean Kaufman (L) with his son Aiden (Courtesy of Sean Kaufman)
‘Are You For or Against CRT?’
While the outcome of Kaufman’s runoff has still to be decided, halfway across the nation in the south, Stephanie Elad has won her seat in the Frisco Independent School District (Frisco ISD), an area about 30 miles north of Dallas, Texas. It was an open seat as the incumbent didn’t seek re-election. She campaigned on academic excellence and teacher retention, and ran as a conservative in the non-partisan race.
Although she didn’t run with CRT as her number one issue or mention the term CRT much, it was the number one question she was asked during door-knocking on Republican-leaning voters. The first question they often asked her was, “Are you for or against CRT?”
“Ninety-five percent of them wanted me just to say I’m against it,” she told The Epoch Times. “I would say I’m against it. And then my next statement was, ‘And we do have it here in Frisco.’”
Some people said they knew, but most were surprised. Then, Elad would provide examples of what she believed to be “CRT inspired.” “One of our high schools did a ‘privilege walk’ last fall. All you had to do is to tell people about that, and they were horrified.”
In a privilege walk, students usually stand in a straight line and step forward if they have certain privileges, such as being white and a male. It’s an activity stemming from the viewpoint that society doesn’t offer equal access to opportunities.
The school board seat is Elad’s first public service job. Her journey began in April 2021 at a school board meeting. She had signed up for public comment to talk about mask mandates but decided to change her topic after the then-board president Chad Rudy told the audience: “Please keep the discussion down. We’re trying to get through our meeting tonight. This is our discussion.”
“There was a comment made that this was your meeting. I think this is our meeting,” she told trustees on the school board. The audience applauded.
“I think the parents and the taxpayers deserve a little more respect,” she added. “This is our meeting.” The audience cheered again.
Stephanie Elad (R) with Marvin Lowe, another conservative who also won a seat on the school board of the Frisco Independent School District in Texas. (Courtesy of Stephanie Elad)
After that, people told her she should run for the school board. And she did. She announced the campaign in January and decided to “lean in” her conservative identity.
She avoided getting into the debate whether CRT was or was not taught in Frisco schools but focused on the outcomes, such as sliding academic standards. For example, to her, the Integrated Language Arts (ILA) pilot program introduced in the 2021-21 school year that combined on-level and advanced-level learning into the same classroom to promote equity and inclusivity was an outcome of a CRT-inspired approach.
The Frisco ISD serves 66,000 students and spans over two counties: Collin and Denton, which is more conservative than Collin. And all board seats are at-large, meaning they represent the entire ISD. This year’s school board election saw a big turnout of around 15,000, compared to 8,000 a year ago.
Elad said everyone told her that, like many conservative municipal candidates before her, she would lose Collin and win Denton and that she needed to make sure the margin in Denton would compensate the loss in Collin. On the contrary, she defeated the runner-up—Dustin Paschal who identified student mental health issues as the biggest challenge—by 400 in Collin County and about 800 votes in Denton.
“I have Democrats donate to me because they hate this [ILA pilot] program so much. Their kids are in it. Some of them have advanced kids, and some don’t,” she told The Epoch Times. “They just don’t like the program and the concept behind it. And they are concerned that it can spread to other subjects.”
‘Fight like Hell with a Smile on Our Faces’
While both Kaufman and Elad run for an open seat, many candidates run against incumbents.
“School boards incumbents lost at nearly twice the historical average,” Ballotpedia, a website that tracks election results, reported at the end of May. The finding was based on candidates who ran on at least one of the three “conflict issues”—identified as race in education, COVID-19 responses, or sex and gender in schools—in 141 school districts in Missouri, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin’s school board elections held on April 5. And the sample size involved 334 seats in those 141 districts.
“I think this might be the first time that people are actually paying attention to school board elections,” Virginia Beach City school board member Victoria Manning told The Epoch Times.
“Often, people go to the polls, and we’re passing out our literature, and I say, ‘Do you know whom you’re voting for school board?’ And they look at me, dazed and confused, ‘What’s that?’”
Manning, a realtor, won her election in 2016 and was re-elected in 2020.
All three issues—race, COVID-19, and sex education—boiled down to parental rights to her. “Ultimately, it boils down to parents having to be the ultimate decision-makers, parents and guardians.”
According to Tiffany Justice, co-founder of advocacy group Moms for Liberty (M4L), parents are “acting preemptively at their local level” to protect their children and not waiting to fight against “harms that they see coming down the pipe.”
Founded in January 2021, M4L now has over 90,000 members in 195 chapters across 37 states, Justice said. A third of the total membership has been new since November. Hawaii, Louisiana, and Connecticut are the latest states with new chapters.
Justice said that her organization continues to grow across the country, focusing on “unifying, educating, and empowering parents to defend or protect their parental rights at all levels of government.”
The battles were not all victories. M4L supported or endorsed over 40 school board candidates who won in the state of New York but also saw losses. For example, in Dutchess County, every candidate the organization endorsed lost.
Justice described the journey as a “long road:” “We didn’t get to this place in America overnight, and it’s going to take time. But we have found that America’s government does not work without us involved.”
Moms are getting creative, she said. She gave an example: at a chapter chair meeting in mid-May, one of the mothers said she got a meeting with the superintendent in her school district. Although angry, she made sure to sandwich her concerns with positive things she could say about the school district. And slowly, she found that the division leadership began addressing her concerns.
“Our moms and dads know that we are fighting for the survival of America,” Justice told The Epoch Times. “There’s no greater national security threat to the United States than having a generation of children who are not able to read or discern [right from wrong] for themselves.”
Her and M4L members’ responses? “Fight like hell with a smile on our faces. Get as many people out and encourage many parents to go out and vote to have their voices heard.”
The Wisconsin Association of School Boards (WASB) has terminated its membership with the National School Boards Association (NSBA) amid controversy over a letter sent to the Biden administration likening concerned parents at school board meetings to “domestic terrorists.”
WASB voted Tuesday not to renew its membership with NSBA, joining a number of states which have opted to do so since the letter came to light last year, Fox News reported.
“Actions by the NSBA’s leadership last fall needlessly harmed school board relationships and inflamed partisan tensions,” WASB said in a statement to its members. “Those actions caused more than half of the state school board organizations across the nation to distance themselves from the NSBA or drop membership entirely.”
The WASB noted that it is “encouraged by the NSBA’s new executive director Dr. John Heim,” according to Fox.
The Epoch Times has contacted the WASB for comment.
‘Angry Mobs’
It comes after the NSBA sent a letter (pdf) to resident Joe Biden on Sept. 29, 2021, asking for federal law enforcement and other assistance to “deal with the growing number of threats of violence and acts of intimidation occurring across the nation,” and characterizing disruptions at school board meetings as “a form of domestic terrorism and hate crime.”
The letter was in response to parents at school board meetings raising issues regarding COVID-19 restrictions like mask mandates that were being imposed on their children, as well as the teaching of Marxist critical race theory.
The letter also referred to the groups of parents raising issues as “angry mobs” that had forced the meetings to “end abruptly.”
“Local school board members want to hear from their communities on important issues and that must be at the forefront of good school board governance and promotion of free speech. However, there also must be safeguards in place to protect public schools and dedicated education leaders as they do their jobs,” the letter noted.
Days after the letter was sent, on Oct. 4, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memo directing federal law enforcement to meet to discuss an alleged “disturbing trend” in “violent threats against school officials and teachers.”
However, following backlash over its letter, the NSBA underwent an independent review to identify the events and procedures that led to its sending of the letter.
That review was completed in May and saw the board implement “a number of action items moving forward” based on its findings while noting that the letter had not been “widely reviewed or approved within the organization, and the finalized letter was not disclosed to the full NSBA Board of Directors or NSBA members until after it was submitted.”
The Board of Directors also apologized in October 2021 for the letter and announced new executive leadership for the organization in November 2021, with Heim replacing former Interim Executive Director and CEO, Chip Slaven.
“The letter directly contradicts our core commitments to parent engagement, local control, and nonpartisanship,” Heim said at the time. “The sentiments shared in the letter do not represent the views or position of the NSBA. The NSBA does not seek or advocate for federal law enforcement intervention at local school board meetings.”
Despite the apology and an independent review, a string of school boards have cut ties with the NSBA since 2021, including in North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio, Missouri, Nebraska, and Minnesota.
Students could be suspended for using wrong pronouns for classmates
Virginia parents are holding a rally on Thursday to oppose a Fairfax County School Board vote on proposed handbook changes that could suspend students as young as fourth grade for “malicious misgendering.”
Fairfax County Public Schools would reserve the right to suspend for a week students who engage in “malicious deadnaming” or use slurs based on “gender identity,” “gender expression,” and “sexual orientation,” according to a copy of its new Student Rights and Responsibilities handbook. Parents opposed to the measure will speak out against the handbook proposals in front of the elementary school where the school board will meet to vote on Thursday evening. Many say they are motivated by a desire to put their child’s education first, rather than “gender politics.”
The “school board is prioritizing these types of initiatives versus focusing on what parents would expect: recovering from learning loss, home/virtual schooling, and getting our kids back into the classroom, post-COVID,” Jeff Hoffman, a Fairfax County father of three, told the Washington Free Beacon.
The vote is the latest political scuffle that has pitted parents against the heavy-handed tactics of public school officials. Led by teachers’ unions and left-wing activist groups, school boards across the nation have implemented policies to encourage the expression of sexual orientation and gender identity in the classroom, often without parental consent. The Free Beaconreported in March on a New Jersey public middle school that forced students to watch a video about hormone treatment, without notifying parents beforehand. Other parents told the Free Beacon their child “socially transitioned” to another gender at school without their knowledge.
The new handbook also represents the lasting influence of the 2020 Supreme Court case Bostock v. Clayton County, which expanded the definition of the Civil Rights Act’s prohibition against sex discrimination to include “gender identity” and “sexual orientation.” After assuming office, resident Joe Biden issued an executive order to the same effect, and Democratic governor Ralph Northam signed companion legislation in Virginia.
The initiative led to a model plan for transgender students put out by the Virginia Department of Education. Among other recommendations, the plan encouraged prohibiting discrimination, harassment, or bullying based on gender identity, as well as identifying students and maintaining their records in “compliance with applicable nondiscrimination laws.” The document cited the Civil Rights Act and Biden’s executive order to explain its reasoning.
The school board had planned in May to vote on the handbook changes. It punted on that decision after a conservative legal group sent a letter to board members and the county chairman warning that the new student rules may be unconstitutional.
America First Legal senior adviser Ian Prior in a statement said the group will monitor whether the school approves the rules on Thursday.
“Fairfax County Public Schools’ amendments increasing punishment for children as young as 8-years old for misgendering other students creates a completely subjective disciplinary regime that is vague, overbroad, and threatens the constitutional rights of students and parents,” Prior said.
The Fairfax County School Board in July 2021 unanimously voted to approve changes to its 2021-22 handbook, which allowed students to use bathrooms based on their gender identity, be referred to by their preferred pronouns, and prevent the disclosure of their gender identity or sexual orientation if they so choose.
Fairfax County parents requested the school board host an in-person townhall on the proposed handbook before the vote, but none has been organized. They have also asked that the vote be delayed until a special report is commissioned to document every “gender-expansive” provision that has followed Virginia’s model transgender student plan.
The rally will be held at 5:30 p.m. at Luther Jackson Middle School in Falls Church before the school board votes at 7 p.m.
Qatar quashes free speech. Tamara Cofman Wittes praised it as a “global gathering place for dialogue.”
Resident Joe Biden’s nominee for a top role at the U.S. Agency for International Development has a long history of praising Qatar, the oppressive Gulf state with a shoddy human rights record that includes restrictions on free expression and the criminalization of same-sex sexual conduct.
Tamara Cofman Wittes is slated to appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday, where the panel will consider her nomination to be an assistant administrator of USAID. If confirmed, she would be responsible for distributing billions of American aid dollars throughout the Middle East.
As a Middle East policy fellow at the Brookings Institution, where she worked first from 2003 to 2009 and then from 2012 until earlier this month, Wittes lavished praise on Qatar, a repressive nation that discriminates against gays, lesbians, and transgender individuals. Wittes described Qatar’s capital city Doha as a “global gathering place for dialogue” and amplified Qatari leaders’ claims that they support human rights and oppose “extremists who exploit religion to incite violence.”
The Brookings Institution was at the time raking in millions from Qatar—its “Doha Center,” renamed after the organization came under scrutiny for the partnership, had a controversial 14-year run. Wittes’s confirmation hearing comes as the Brookings Institution faces renewed scrutiny over its foreign financial ties. The think tank’s president, retired general John Allen, resigned on Sunday amid news that he is under federal investigation for his alleged role in illegally lobbying for Qatar.
While the Brookings Institution took money from several foreign governments over the past decade, Qatar appears to be its most significant foreign donor, pouring at least $22 million into the think tank between 2013 and 2021, according to congressional financial disclosures and the organization’s annual donor reports.
Wittes’s record, laid out in her writing and prolific tweets that are now shielded from public view, also includes criticism of U.S.-brokered deals normalizing relations between Israel and Arab governments and of Israel’s pushback on activists calling for an economic boycott of the Jewish State. It may be an obstacle as she looks to win Republican support ahead of her confirmation hearing. It is unclear, for example, how Republican lawmakers will respond to her amplification of a tweet suggesting that Trump supporters should be subject to the same process of “denazification” that sought to rid Germany and Austria of Nazi ideology after World War II.
Congressional Republicans voiced concern about her criticism of the Abraham Accords, an agreement that normalized ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, among others.
“Wittes was one of the most bitter opponents of the Abraham Accords. She trashed everyone involved, including and especially Israel,” a senior Republican congressional aide told the Washington Free Beacon.
Wittes quoted articles decrying the deal as misogynistic, a “new Naksa”—referring to the Palestinian word for “setback”—and as a “triumph for authoritarianism.”
“If I were an Arab leader weighing ties with Israel, I would have 2 things in mind,” Wittes wrote on Twitter in September 2020. “1) A promise from [Trump adviser Jared] Kushner now isn’t worth much. Why not wait until after Nov elections? 2) Bibi’s backtracked on his commitments to UAE; his promises aren’t worth much either. Let’s wait & see.”
Wittes argued that the several Gulf states taking steps toward normalization with Israel were engaged in a “betrayal of Palestinian interests” and the agreement would make it more difficult to extract Israeli concessions in return for a peace deal with the Palestinians.
“This is not Middle East peace. It’s certainly not Middle East peace when there are horrific civil wars going on in the region,” Wittes said of the accords. “That’s where I think it’s been oversold.”
She went so far as to blame Gulf states that joined the Abraham Accords with Israel for the May 2021 war between Hamas and Israel.
“The risk now is that Arab states that normalised with Israel bought this mess and now have to live with it,” she told the Independent.
Notwithstanding her extensive writing and tweeting on the subject, Wittes told the Washington Free Beacon days before her confirmation hearing that she supports the Abraham Accords.
“I have never expressed ‘strong opposition to the Abraham Accords,’” Wittes said. “I support the Accords and the profound transformation they have wrought.”
“When the Accords were announced in September 2020, I told the New York Times that ‘Abu Dhabi and Jerusalem each had their own good reasons for finding a way to open the door to formal relations,’” Wittes said.
She also noted that her last column for the Brookings Institution said that the Accords “strengthened the pro-American coalition in the region and created opportunities for Arab states and Israel to pursue mutually advantageous security, economic, and social projects.”
The Abraham Accords also happened to draw opposition from Qatar, whose funding for Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood has put it at odds with both the Jewish state and the United Arab Emirates.
Wittes also highlighted claims that the Qatari government — which has been accused of widespread human rights violations, including jailing protesters and maintaining abusive workplace conditions for migrant workers – supports human rights and tolerance.
“Qatar deputy PM says Islam, like West, embraces human rights because they’re to benefit of all, esp non-Muslim minorities in Muslim World,” Wittes wrote in 2013.
“Doha’s become global gathering place for dialogue!” she wrote in one 2012 post, adding that Brookings “has partnered w/ Qatar many years.”
The Brookings Institution said Qatar’s donations in 2020 and 2021 were the final payments from a prior fundraising pledge. “Qatar will not be listed as a financial supporter in the 2022 annual report,” a Brookings Institution spokeswoman told the Free Beacon.
This episode will premiere on Tuesday, June 14, at 7:30 p.m. ET!
“In most places, the public school system has gotten so bad, they’re doing more grooming than they are educating, grooming toward sexual chaos and leftist politics than any real educating toward truth and beauty and goodness.”
I sit down with actor Kirk Cameron, who’s most well-known for his role in the 1980s sitcom “Growing Pains.” He is the executive producer and star of the new documentary “The Homeschool Awakening.”
“History tells us that whoever controls the textbooks, controls the future,” he says.
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Georgia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams sits on the board of a foundation that funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to an anti-Israel activist who has praised terrorists and encouraged violence against Jews.
Abrams joined the Marguerite Casey Foundation board in May 2021, business filings show. Roughly six months later, the foundation announced its 2021 cohort of “Freedom Scholars,” a group of “leading thinkers and scholars … in critical fields including abolitionist, Black, feminist, queer, radical, and anti-colonialist studies.” Included in the group was UCLA professor Robin D.G. Kelley, a leading Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) activist who works with groups that collaborate with Palestinian terrorists.
Kelley, who received $250,000 through the program, praised the Palestine Liberation Organization—a U.S.-designated terror group—as “revolutionary combatants” and “models for those of us dedicated to Black liberation and socialism” in a 2016 article. Three years prior, Kelley encouraged Palestinians to use violence against Israelis, calling the notion that Palestinians should only protest non-violently a “bludgeon to beat down Palestinian organizations.” Kelley also advisesthe U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, a group that operates to advance the BDS movement on college campuses. The campaign’s fiscal sponsor, Al-Awda, works with Palestinian terrorist organizations such as Hamas to grow BDS and routinely hosts convicted Islamic jihadists at its events, the Jerusalem Post reported in 2019.
Abrams’s role in funding Kelley provides a startling window into how the Democrat could handle the BDS movement and larger issues of anti-Semitism on Georgia’s college campuses should she defeat Gov. Brian Kemp (R.) in November. As governor, Abrams would appoint members to the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia, which oversees the state’s public colleges and universities. Georgia legislators passed a law in 2016 that forbids the state from contracting a person or company that promotes a boycott of Israel, but a federal judge struck that law down in May 2021. Abrams opposed the law as a state representative and reportedly refused to meet with pro-Israel activists at the time.
It is unclear whether Abrams was directly involved with the grant to Kelley. When she joined the foundation’s board in 2021, she emphasized that a major part of her role would be determining “how the philanthropic network targets its contributions.” Neither Abrams nor the foundation responded to inquiries on her involvement with the Freedom Scholars program. Abrams has earned more than $52,000 from the foundation since 2020, her financial disclosures show.
In addition to Kelley’s anti-Israel activism, the professor has called himself a “communist for life” and argued that capitalism is inherently racist. The Marguerite Casey Foundation also awarded $250,000 to a pair of academics—Angelica Chazaro and Ananya Roy—who advocate for the abolition of prisons and private property, respectively.
In May 2021, the foundation launched its “Answer the Uprising” initiative, which aims to fund groups working to “transform, defund, [and] abolish” police. The initiative was “fully supported by Marguerite Casey Foundation’s Board of Directors, which recently named seven new changemakers to the Board, including Stacey Abrams,” the foundation said in a press release. One year before Abrams decided to join the group’s board, the foundation gave $200,000 to the Louisville Community Bail Fund, which later paid $100,000 to free Quintez Brown, an anti-police activist charged with the attempted murder of a Jewish mayoral candidate.
Abrams ran unopposed in Georgia’s May primary election and will face Kemp in November after the Republican defeated Trump-backed challenger and former senator David Perdue by 52 points in his own primary bid. Her campaign against Kemp is not her first—the Democrat lost to Kemp by roughly 2 points in 2018 but never conceded defeat, instead arguing the election was “stolen” due to “voter suppression.” After her loss, Abrams launched a nonprofit “voting rights” group that sued Georgia’s secretary of state to challenge the validity of the election. That lawsuit blasted the state’s use of “unreliable” voting machines and even alleged the machines “switched” votes from Abrams to Kemp.
The world’s richest person is slamming Twitter’s “bias against half the country” and demanding answers after Twitter allegedly did not remove accounts of users who made death threats against a conservative user.
“A platform cannot be considered inclusive or fair if it is biased against half the country,” Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Muskwrote on June 13, in response to another Twitter user’s post on the same day saying, “On a just platform, everyone would be treated equally. As it is, you can be banned [on Twitter] for merely criticizing (not even threatening) woke progressives, but they can send conservatives death threats without any repercussions.”
A platform cannot be considered inclusive or fair if it is biased against half the country
Musk’s comments came after a dozen Twitter users allegedly directed death threats against Twitter user Libs of TikTok—short for Liberals of TikTok.
“I have now received about a dozen death threats after radical leftists accused me of being a domestic terrorist extremist,” Twitter user Libs of TikTok wrote. “Twitter has not removed any of the accounts of those who sent the threats.”
In reply to the post, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tagged Twitter and asked, “Why?”
Libs of Tiktok, a Twitter page with more than 1.2 million followers and operated by Chaya Raichik, regularly posts content criticizing liberal, left-wing, and LGBTQ events and ideas.
For example, Libs of Tiktok wrote in a post on June 13, “A children’s hospital in Nebraska is co-hosting a children’s pride event. They advertise there will be a booth where attendees can make an appointment for ‘gender affirming care’ such as puberty blockers.@ChildrensOmaha receives millions in funding.”
A children’s hospital in Nebraska is co-hosting a children’s pride event. They advertise there will be a booth where attendees can make an appointment for “gender affirming care” such as puberty blockers. @ChildrensOmaha receives millions in funding. https://t.co/LKrKHkArpRpic.twitter.com/nvp1j9ZCvb
Raichik’s stance has drawn hostility from some on the left, including a Twitter user with the handle “@thisisironicfr” who claimed to have sent her a pipe bomb on June 13.
Elon Musk, who is negotiating a multi-billion dollar deal with Twitter, said Twitter has a “strong left-wing bias” in May. The billionaire also called censorship on Twitter a “civilization risk” in April and suggested in May that he will lift the ban imposed on former U.S. President Donald Trump after he takes ago.
According to conservative commentator Jack Posobiec, the exchange between Musk and Raichik will be “interesting” considering Raichik is one of the first people who obtained internal discussions of Twitter employees about banning her page.
As far as I know @libsoftiktok is one of the first people to ever leak actual internal comms from within Twitter
“We received our third Twitter suspension just last week for posting fliers of pride events,” wrote Libs of Tiktok in a June 14 article on its website, within an hour of Musk’s reply to the post about death threats. “I had created a ‘mega drag thread’ which documented the sharp rise in drag events for kids. It’s a disturbing trend; the Left has become obsessed with ensuring your 4-year-old has access to men dressed as women while dancing provocatively for cash.”
“The fact that I was noticing—and drawing attention to how widespread this trend really is—seemed to trigger the Left.” the article reads. “The below Slack conversation between Twitter employees occurred today against this backdrop, and echoes some of the charges leveled at us by far left activists.”
“As you can see, they’re weighing the pros and cons of banning us,” the article added. “But again, you don’t need leaked messages to know just how biased and agenda-driven these people are.”
“It only confirms what we already see with our own eyes every day.”
Correction: This article previously misstated the full name of Libs of TikTok. Libs is short for Liberals. The Epoch Times regrets the error.
Surveys in Missourischools that collect information from students and create a perceived need for a so-called social-emotional learning curriculum have drawn the attention of state officials.
Attorney General Eric Schmitt issued subpoenas last week to seven school districts that allegedly employ student surveys—created by education companies Panorama and Project Wayfinder—that gather data about parents’ political beliefs and income levels, as well as racial identity, sexual behaviors, and mental health.
“Those same groups come in and sell that curriculum to the schools,” said Kimberly Hermann, general counsel with Southeastern Legal Foundation, a national nonprofit law firm that defends liberty.
“The contracts with these companies are public record, so they’re supposed to be approved during school board meetings, but the surveys are happening without parental consent and parental notification.”
In response, Schmitt has opened an investigation into the use of student surveys in Mehlville, Webster Groves, Jefferson City, Lee’s Summit R-7, Park Hill, Springfield, and Neosho schools—with an eye on violations of Missouri’s Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment.
“Subjecting students to personal, invasive surveys created by third-party consultants, potentially without parents’ consent, is ridiculous and does nothing to further our children’s education,” Schmitt said in a statement.
Hermann details in a May 1 letter to Schmitt that Webster Groves requires middle school students to take a survey on “LGBTQIA+ Struggles!” that asks: “What are your preferred pronouns, what struggles have you experienced related to LGBTQIA+, and what would you like to see in the school in order to be more inclusive?”
“There are federal statutes that they’re not supposed to ask these questions,” said Andy Wells, the Missouri chapter president of No Left Turn in Education, a national education advocacy organization.
“The problem is that school districts, and some of the companies that are being hired by school districts, don’t care. They just ignore it. They do it anyway and if somebody doesn’t like it, you’ll have to sue them.”
Second-graders were asked, “When is the first time you noticed that people can be different races from you, what did you notice, and do you feel more comfortable around people who look like you?”
“The goal here is to teach these kids that America is a white country of white supremacy and to destroy the nuclear family,” Hermann said. “If bad actors in the progressive left are not stopped, then we’re just going to have a further divide in this country among our kids.”
Neither Panorama nor Project Wayfinder responded by press time to requests by The Epoch Times for comment.
Schools often create partnerships with third-party vendors to secure grant money, according to Jill Carter, a candidate for the Missouri Senate’s 32nd District, and by accepting the grant, they are bound to allow the surveying.
“If it’s a platform that’s providing software or technology, especially with the technology in our school’s increasing, there’s less and less ability for the school to even really know what is being asked,” Carter told The Epoch Times.
“They are giving over that oversight, and the teachers sometimes don’t even know, because the kids are online or on a tablet, and that’s part of the software or implementation of some of these programs.”
Among the concerns identified is confidentiality.
“There’s a lot of danger by it,” Wells told The Epoch Times. “The biggest of which is who has access to the data and whether it follows students to college. How is the data being used?”
Another anxiety is whether the information gleaned is creating a profile that flags a need for intervention.
“It’s definitely a force of government and the intervention would be, ‘If we don’t like the way you respond on these surveys, we’re going to recommend intervention,’ and Panorama offers intervention activities and questions,” said Missouri-based Mary Byrne, who holds a doctorate in education from Teacher’s College in Manhattan.
“There’s a menu that you can access for teachers to implement different activities.”
The use of surveys isn’t new, according to Byrne.
“It was done years before, and that’s why the Pupil Privacy Act was put in place,” she said.
The Pupil Privacy Act, also known as the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment of 1978, prohibits children from participating in surveys and other analyses without parental consent and includes a provision for parents to opt their child out of such evaluations.
But there is no cause of action to file a lawsuit for a violation of federal privacy laws.
“The way Congress wrote the law is you can file an administrative complaint, but under the Biden administration, we know that’s not going anywhere,” Hermann said.
The subpoenas delivered by Schmitt demand documents and information to determine the extent of the surveys and whether parents consented to the surveys prior to distribution to students.
“We’d like him to obtain information regarding where these surveys are coming from and enforce federal and state privacy laws,” Hermann said.
“He has numerous different avenues that he could go based on the law and his investigatory power. So we’re going to leave it to his office to make determinations about what they think the best avenue is.”
“Who was the Tolstoy of the Zulus?” Saul Bellow is alleged to have quipped some time in the early ’90s. Deploying what in today’s meme-ified political culture would probably be described as a clap back, the sportswriter and essayist Ralph Wiley responded: “Tolstoy is the Tolstoy of the Zulus. Unless you find a profit in fencing off universal properties of mankind into exclusive tribal ownership.”
Bellow would later plead the defense of journalistic misunderstanding and misrepresentation. But let’s—for the sake of argument—stick to the oversimplified, if rather unfair, version of the story: Wiley schools grumpy old reactionary. Viewed from 2022, the interesting thing about the exchange is Wiley’s appeal to universalism. Today, such an approach to culture has become passé in fashionable left-wing circles. To be woke is to espouse the importance of “lived experience,” to indulge in the very “fencing off” that Wiley denounced, and to obsess over the differences, say, between the Zulus and the Russians, rather than claim that a book could transcend them. In other words, to the in crowd of elite progressives, sticking up for a great work of European literature and what it offers to whoever might pick it up—whether they happen to be in St Petersburg or Soweto—is more than a little “problematic.”
What happened? When did the tables turn? And why do those of us who still believe in that universalism suddenly find ourselves out of step with the ideas that seem to dominate public life? More broadly, why is the West beset by a sometimes paralyzing self-loathing? These are some of the questions Douglas Murray answers in The War on the West, a book he describes in its introduction as being “about what happens when one side in a cold war—the side of democracy, reason, rights, and universal principles—prematurely surrenders.”
In his previous works, Murray, a British author now based in America, has tackled questions of cultural and identity politics on both sides of the Atlantic as well as immigration and radical Islam in Europe. The War on the West is designed for readers who, though they may see a great deal of folly in the woke reckoning that has become increasingly hard to ignore in recent years, might see it as an unserious sideshow. Murray urges readers to avoid the temptation to dismiss debates about race, history, and identity as “fringe” or trivial “culture wars.” To do so, he argues, is to “misinterpret the aims of the participants or downplay the role it will have in the lives of future generations.” At stake, he argues, is whether the West will be crippled by self-hatred and kill the goose that lays the golden egg, or whether we appreciate the West’s intellectual and cultural inheritance and use its strengths to our advantage.
The aggressors in Murray’s war come from within, and the battleground is all around us: everywhere from the pre-school classroom to the art gallery. Murray details the woke assault on a series of overlapping fronts—race, religion, history, and culture—and is at his best when picking apart the inconsistencies, fallacies, and hypocrisies in the assailants’ arguments.
Whether its the feted Ibram X. Kendi’s tautological definition of racism or the embarrassing historical ignorance of many of those put forward to argue for a statue to be brought down or a building to be renamed, there is very little there when the woke warriors’ arguments are subjected to a light grilling. As Murray demonstrates, the aggressors are also far more parochial than they think they are. Western history is, in their view, indelibly stained by racism. The rest of the world? Less so. “If other countries do have any racism, it must be because the West exported the vice to them,” says Murray, paraphrasing the argument.
Often, the mindlessness of the cultural and historical vandalism is so self-evident that Murray need do little more than lay out his opponents’ views. One of the dreariest scenes in The War on the West is a discussion at Cambridge University’s Churchill College on the “Racial Consequences of Churchill.” The panel was historian-free, and the participating academics were liberated to make all manner of ridiculous claims, recounted by Murray: The British Empire was “far worse than the Nazis” argued one; another argued that victory over the Nazis wasn’t a big deal given that “all we really did was we shifted from an old version of white supremacy to a new version of white supremacy”; a third snarkily pointed out that, actually, Churchill was at home, not on the front lines, during the Second World War. (The great wartime leader was in his late 60s when he became prime minister and, as Murray points out, saw action on four continents as a young man.)
A panel discussion at a Cambridge college is, of course, a fairly low-stakes affair in the grand scheme of things, but it is illustrative of the offensively ahistorical arguments that are tolerated if they are in keeping with the vogue for wokeness. Elsewhere, a more serious and sustained attack on Churchill and his legacy is underway. Once a universally admired national hero, the great statesman now faces a reckoning. It is an illustrative example for the British author (and this British reviewer), for, as Murray puts it: “If what Churchill did in his life doesn’t count for anything, then it is hard to see how any human action counts for anything. If Churchill’s good points cannot outweigh any bad points, then no one can ever do enough good in their lives.”
But that, of course, is the point. The bold choice of target reveals the scale of the assailants’ ambitions: “Perhaps more than any other single figure, he has been seen as an example of a great man—and a great man produced by the West.” If Churchill can be toppled, “anything might be forced upon a people so subjected and demoralized.”
Many of these arguments will be familiar to readers, but the value of The War on the West is in the shocking effect of the full battle report. Murray successfully conveys just how comprehensive the attack on Western values, culture, and history really is. The effect is energizing: a warning against the complacent eye-roll that is so tempting when faced with the latest woke insanity.
Applying present-day standards to historical figures is a fruitless pursuit no matter the target, but, as Murray identifies, it is the unevenness with which these tests are applied that gives the game away. Karl Marx’s racism and anti-Semitism, for example, has not led to the kind of reassessment that great Western leaders have been subjected to.
The War on the West will leave those who recognize the threat it identifies hungry for more. Murray fights back against the iconoclasts with vigor. But if, as Murray correctly identifies, wokeness resembles a godless religion—filling a need for cosmic meaning and its dogma trotted out unquestioningly—then there will be limits to the success of such appeals to reason. Here, Murray risks falling into the same trap as the New Atheists, who sometimes appeared to think that an especially witty enough debate-hall zinger would be enough to bring thousands of years of monotheism tumbling to the ground.
But where The War on The West is most valuable is in explaining the importance of the clash in question. A culture that finds it hard to say anything nice about itself is not one with a bright future. Does that mean the West is perfect? Of course not. But, as we are discovering, self-loathing is not a foundation on which to build a healthy society.
The War on the West by Douglas Murray Broadside Books, 308 pp., $27.99
Oliver Wiseman is deputy editor of The Spectator World, the U.S. edition of the world’s oldest magazine.
Have you heard about “Drag Queen Story Hour” for young children being held in schools and libraries?
How do you feel about “sex ed” lessons telling kids they can choose to be a boy or a girl-or something in between?
What about kids reading graphically sexual books as part of required school curriculum? It’s difficult for me to show you these images, but I think it’s important for you to know about what kids are seeing, at very young ages, in private and public schools. This is no longer extreme fringe content; this is now mainstream.
WARNING: Graphic Images Below
You might think it’s only happening in left-wing states like California or New York. That is, unfortunately, not the case. Across the country, kids from kindergarten to high school are being exposed to early sexualization. This is often at the taxpayers’ expense in publicly-funded schools!
And, the reality is, it’s not just schools. Mainstream media networks, like Nickelodeon and Netflix, have kids shows about topics like gender fluidity and “toxic masculinity.” You’ve probably heard about the latest controversies at Disney. The Magic Kingdom wants to sexualize children. Here’s a direct quote from a recently leaked internal Disney meeting:
“Our leadership over there has been so welcoming to my, like, not-at-all-secret gay agenda…I was just, wherever I could, just basically adding queerness…No one would stop me and no one was trying to stop me.”
–Latoya Ravenaeu, executive producer at Disney Television Animation
The left unapologetically stands behind its blatant SEXUAL AGENDA for our children and is trying to erase boundaries…between families and “The State,” between men and women, and (most shocking to me) increasingly between children and adults.
Our kids are caught in the crosshairs of a political agenda to destroy the values that form the bedrock of our nation. PragerU refuses to stand idly by while the minds of our precious youth are warped and politicized to serve the goals of the left.
That’s why we created PragerU Kids.
PragerU Kids is PragerU’s K-12th grade educational initiative, with books, magazines, and kids shows that instill pro-America ideas and classic values. Launched just last year, PragerU Kids content has already been watched 16,000,000 times!
PragerU has a cure for the left’s ideological sickness. Our PragerU Kids content offers penicillin to inoculate young minds from this brainwashing.
Rest assured, we’re not alone in this fight. Over 300,000 parents and educators have already subscribed to PragerU Kids and are sharing our content far and wide-the majority are brand new to PragerU! They want to protect our children’s minds from this evil as much as we do.
With your help, PragerU will expose what the left is actually attempting to do-turn our children into miserable, ungrateful, political activists who question their God-given nature, reject their families’ traditional values, and learn to despise America.
Our children’s minds are at stake. Failure is not an option.
PragerU will fight for our children-and for America-but only with your help. America as we know it depends on us educating millions more parents, giving children positive alternatives, and offering kids the chance to become healthy, productive, patriotic adults.
The June 14 Republican primary in South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District pits incumbent Rep. Nancy Mace, a candidate Donald Trump supported in 2020, against former state Rep. Katie Arrington, who has the former president’s endorsement.
Republicans are focused on regaining control of the House by flipping seats, but the party’s faction that embraces Trump’s “America First” platform is committed to replacing representatives whose track record is not friendly to the former president.
From 2016 to 2018, Arrington represented South Carolina’s 94th House District.
In 2018, she defeated sitting congressman and former governor Mark Sanford in the Republican primary before losing in the general election to Democratic Rep. Joe Cunningham. It was the first time a Democratic U.S. House candidate prevailed in the district since 1978.
Bolstered by Trump’s support, Mace unseated Cunningham in 2020. Mace voted to certify Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election and has frequently blamed Trump for the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol events.
This led Trump to give Arrington his stamp of approval to unseat Mace.
“She turned her back on [former] president Trump, and that is not what a conservative does,” Arrington said at a May 23 debate. “She read the room wrong. She thought this district was a moderate district, and we are not.”
Through May 25, which was the deadline to submit pre-primary fundraising reports, Mace raised more than $4.1 million in contributions and had $1.4 million cash on hand.
Federal filings showed Arrington with more than $909,000, including a personal loan of $525,000. As of May 25, she had $607,000 cash on hand.
Mace served as a state representative in South Carolina’s House of Representatives from 2018 to 2020 before earning her current seat in the 1st Congressional District. She is endorsed by former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, U.S. House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) along with the National Rifle Association, and Club for Growth.
Mace claims that Arrington is not electable. She points to 2018, when Arrington upset Sanford in the Republican primary but lost to Cunningham.
“I’m the only candidate up here who knows how to beat a Democrat in this day and age in this district,” Mace said in a statement. “I promised that I would work hard, I promised to be an independent voice, and I promised not to tow the party line when they taxed too much and spent too much in this country.”
Former state Rep. Katie Arrington is running against incumbent Rep. Nancy Mace in the South Carolina GOP 1st Congressional District primary. (Courtesy of Katie Arrington for Congress).
The 1st Congressional District Republican primary featured three candidates until the debate on May 23.
While answering the opening question, Lynz Piper-Loomis expressed her support for Arrington, removed her microphone, and exited the stage and the race.
Arrington is a cybersecurity expert who served as the Pentagon’s chief information security officer in the acquisition and sustainment office during the Trump administration.
Through comments and the ad, Mace has hammered Arrington about the Pentagon suspending her security clearance in 2021 because of accusations that she disclosed classified information.
“If our military doesn’t trust Katie Arrington, neither can we,” the narrator says in Mace’s attack ad.
Arrington defended herself against the allegations.
“Ladies and gentlemen, just shows you how low Nancy Mace will go,” she said during the debate. “I was a victim of a political hit job, point blank. I proudly serve my nation.”
During campaign stops, Arrington talks about her opposition to critical race theory being taught in classrooms and calls out schools “indoctrinating” children with a transgender agenda. She supports eliminating the U.S. Department of Education.
Mace has “flip-flopped” on multiple issues since taking office, Arrington contends, including transgender advocacy in the military.
The 1st Congressional District is home to Marine Corps Recruit Depot at Parris Island, and the Marine Corps Air Station in Beaufort.
“In 2020, Nancy Mace released an ad attacking Joe Cunningham over his support for transgender advocacy in the military,” Arrington said in a statement.
“Interestingly enough, she co-sponsored with a progressive Democrat from Hawaii to create with our tax dollars a special office for transgenders in the VA (Veterans Affairs).
“This is just one of many flip-flops Nancy has made throughout her short time in D.C.,” Arrington added. “Nancy Mace is not a conservative. Since day one, she has compromised our values to advance her own career. We cannot afford another term of her self-serving agenda.”
Arrington is confident that redistricting adjustments will help her in the primary and, if she wins on June 14, the general election.
The 1st Congressional District’s new map now extends further inland to the north, which has created a district where Republicans have a 17-point advantage, up from a 14-point advantage on the old map, according to FiveThirtyEight.
A Trafalgar Group poll conducted from May 26 to May 29 and released on June 2 showed that Mace led with 46.4 percent while Arrington received 40.5 percent with 13.1 percent undecided. The survey included 556 likely Republican primary voters and had a margin of error of four percentage points.
Arrington believes her campaign is gaining momentum at the right time, pointing to a Charleston County GOP straw poll that showed her with 86 percent support compared to Mace’s 14 percent. Arrington reported similar lopsided results in straw polls conducted in Berkeley and Beaufort counties.
“Voters are tired of swamp sellout Nancy Mace, and despite her lies, her campaign is in a downward spiral,” Arrington said in a statement. “The people of SC-1 want a pro-Trump America First conservative, not a RINO [Republican in Name Only] who votes with AOC [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] 45 percent of the time.”
Mace or Arrington will face Dr. Annie Andrews, a pediatrician, in the general election. Andrews is unopposed in the Democrat primary.
The Cook Political Report, Sabato’s Crystal Ball, and Inside Elections have rated South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District as a solid/safe Republican seat, so the winner of the GOP primary will be heavily favored in November.
The Tampa Bay Rays hosted their 16th annual “Pride Day” last Saturday. The occasion featured mini rainbow flags sprinkled throughout the stadium and the players wore rainbow patches on their jerseys and rainbow-colored logos on their caps.
But not all the players chose to participate.
In the eighth inning, two pitchers took the mound for the Rays. Neither wore the patches on their jerseys. Neither donned the caps with rainbow logos.
According to the Tampa Bay Times, the two pitchers—Brooks Raley and Jalen Beeks—weren’t alone. Three other teammates, Jason Adam, Jeffrey Springs and Ryan Thompson, also chose not to wear the rainbow insignias.
Pitcher Jason Adam explained that he made his decision because of his Christian faith:
“A lot of it comes down to faith, to like a faith-based decision. So it’s a hard decision. Because ultimately we all said what we want is them to know that all are welcome and loved here. But when we put it on our bodies, I think a lot of guys decided that it’s just a lifestyle that maybe—not that they look down on anybody or think differently—it’s just that maybe we don’t want to encourage it if we believe in Jesus, who’s encouraged us to live a lifestyle that would abstain from that behavior, just like (Jesus) encourages me as a heterosexual male to abstain from sex outside of the confines of marriage. It’s no different. It’s not judgmental. It’s not looking down. It’s just what we believe the lifestyle He’s encouraged us to live, for our good, not to withhold. But again, we love these men and women, we care about them, and we want them to feel safe and welcome here.”
Rays Manager Kevin Cash did not condemn Adam or others who chose not to wear the rainbow patches. He cited the clubhouse dialogue following the incident, asserting the disagreements had not caused any divisions. He told the media he was “impressed that our players have had those conversations, and we want to support our players that choose to wear or choose not to wear to the best of our capabilities.”
However, not everybody was as respectful of the players’ beliefs.
The New York Times compared Adam’s decision—one borne out of his religious convictions—to an incident six years ago, when then-White Sox pitcher Chris Sale cut up a jersey he was supposed to wear because it was “ugly” and “uncomfortable.” Since Sale was penalized for his actions, the Times wrote, Adam should also face similar consequences.
Social media was also in outrage over Adam’s convictions. Adam’s Instagram page was flooded with hateful and vindictive comments against him and his family:
Will the MLB step in and enforce their agenda by canceling those who act on their religious convictions?
One thing’s become clear over the last several years. Woke corporations are quick to crack down, punish, demote or even fire any religious person expressing a viewpoint that doesn’t conform to the modern Leftist orthodoxy. Tolerating diverse viewpoints and people with different beliefs is not good enough. Instead, many of these companies coerce religious Americans to celebrate ideas with which they disagree.
As evidence, look at what’s happened to several First Liberty clients.
Alaska Airlines wrongfully terminated Lacey Smith and Marli Brown, two flight attendants, because of their Christian faith.
Acting on their religious beliefs, Lacey and Marli politely asked about the company’s support for the “Equality” Act, after the airline invited employees to discuss the topic in an employee-only forum. Both of them were concerned about the impact this bill could have on their freedoms—as do millions of Americans.
Similarly, First Liberty is defending Robyn Strader—a nurse practitioner with multiple, advanced degrees—who was fired from CVS Pharmacy after the company accommodated her religious beliefs without issue for six and a half years. Why? Because CVS wants to force its employees to prescribe abortifacients, even when it violates their religious beliefs.
The Tampa Bay Rays and the MLB have not punished their players for adhering to their genuinely held religious convictions. Not yet, at least. But as the cases above show, woke corporate America won’t hesitate to cancel any employee who expresses traditional, religious beliefs on moral issues. Let’s hope these religious players aren’t canceled or fired for living according to their beliefs. But if they are, First Liberty stands ready to defend their First Freedom.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis (R.) said he may use child safety laws to ban drag shows for kids after a “Drag Show for Kids!” event in West Palm Beach.
DeSantis said he is exploring the use of “child protective statutes” and “laws against child endangerment” to prohibit the shows. Another drag show in Dallas went viral this week, prompting one Florida lawmaker to say he will introduce legislation to criminalize bringing kids to such events. DeSantis noted there was “graphic language” used at the Dallas drag show, including a neon sign that read, “It’s not gonna lick itself.”
“You had these very young kids, and they must have been like 9, 10 years old, at a ‘drag show’ where they were putting money in the underwear of this—and that is totally inappropriate,” DeSantis said in a news conference in Fort Myers on Wednesday. “That is not something that children should be exposed to.”
The Florida governor likened his efforts to ban drag entertainment for children to his March Parental Rights in Education bill, which banned instruction of sexual orientation and gender identity for children in kindergarten through third grade. The Biden administration issued a “Fact Sheet” after the bill passed, condemning “anti-transgender legislative attacks” and supporting the Equality Act, which would allow minors to undergo gender-transition therapies without parental permission.
A California Democratic state senator in response to DeSantis suggested codifying drag shows for children at schools in his state.
“This guy just gave me a bill idea: Offering Drag Queen 101 as part of the K-12 curriculum,” Scott Wiener tweeted. “Attending Drag Queen Story Time will satisfy the requirement.”
DeSantis’s education bill, the governor said, was enacted to preserve a “normal environment” where kids “read and write and add and subtract,” instead of having leftwing teachers and administrators “shov[e] political agendas down their throats.”
“We want to have our kids be kids,” DeSantis said.
Lia Thomas previously competed as a male swimmer—claiming second place in several Ivy League championship events at Penn university as a man—before winning at the NCAAs while competing as a female.
Few women athletes have dared to openly decry any biological advantage Thomas might have competing with biologically female swimmers.
But Hall of Fame marathon swimmer and women’s rights advocate Sandra Bucha, 67, who paved the way for female athletes everywhere, knows what women athletes are now up against.
Now a civil law attorney for four decades, Bucha, of Sun City, Florida, was a record-breaking swimmer who missed qualifying for the 1972 Munich Olympics by just six-tenths of a second. She previously toppled barriers of inequity that once held female athletes back from fulfilling their dreams, and helped establish an equal playing field in sports.
Bucha respects the struggle of transgender athletes, she said; however, female athletes are “terrified” to speak out about the “fundamental unfairness” of biological men competing against women. This threatens the foundation she helped lay—so she spoke up.
(Courtesy of Sandra Bucha)
“I would have thought this is fundamentally unfair,” Bucha told The Epoch Times. “I trained my entire life as a woman, a biological woman, competing against biological women for a spot in the United States Olympic Team, and now there’s someone who has an inherent biological advantage over me who’s taken my dream, who has slashed my dream—displaced me and destroyed my dream, shattered my dream.”
A “loud but powerful minority” has chilled the conversation for the rights of female athletes—a conversation Bucha once lived firsthand. As a preteen swimmer in Hinsdale, Illinois, where she was reared, she excelled under Hall of Fame-inducted coach Don Watson’s tutelage, but quickly found females’ high school swim leagues in short supply (there were none), unlike boys’. An exceptional athlete, she was allowed to train with the boys; other girls let slip their careers.
“I watched the boys participate in high school swim meets, I cheered on the boys as they competed,” Bucha said. “But I could not compete in any high school team.
“If other girls would have been given that opportunity, they would have cracked the ceiling and been able to pursue their swimming careers,” she added. “Most of the girls I knew that were very, very good swimmers, they quit, they didn’t continue because there was no opportunity for them.
“I believe there would have been other women that could have been also competing for the Olympic Team, but they didn’t have the opportunity I had.”
Nor was there college swimming for girls, she soon discovered. Age 17 or 18 was the end of the line, after which, girl swimmers retired.
Bucha left the pool to attend her freshman year at Stanford, but that summer, she saw a newspaper ad for a 10-mile marathon in Lake Michigan with a $2,500 prize. The catch? She had to swim against both sexes. But Bucha took home second prize, behind a male competitor, while claiming a world record to boot. Then she joined a professional marathon swimming circuit. In 2014, she was inducted in the Swimming Hall of Fame for her achievements.
(Courtesy of Sandra Bucha)
But the “fundamental unfairness” of those years impelled her dad to sue the State of Illinois and the Illinois High School Association in 1972, seeking equal rights. “The court found, ‘Yes, there should be high school girls’ teams,’” said Bucha. “The interesting part is the judge said, ‘But meanwhile, we will not allow girls to compete against boys, because it is fundamentally unfair to the girls,’ because the girls will probably be beaten by the boys because they are biologically superior.”
This, along with the efforts of other women athletes, was instrumental in establishing a foothold for separate and equal athletic opportunities for both sexes.
Fifty years on, it’s fitting Bucha should stand up again; we’re turning the clock back toward marginalizing women, she thinks.
“Women are being returned to the sidelines of sports,” she said. “Fifty years later, that same group that represented me to get rights for women [the ACLU] is now representing the transgender groups, or individuals, to harm one set of individuals only, and that one set of individuals is women again.
“We are dealing with a limited number of individuals who identify as transgender, not an entire sex, like women versus men,” she added. “It’s a very small category of individuals that are displacing women, and women only. You don’t see transgender men displacing men in swimming competitions, for example, you don’t see that fundamental unfairness that you see when you have a biological man—meaning a transgender woman—displace a woman swimmer.”
Unlike 1972, today’s political climate makes girls nervous about offending the woke crowd, for fear of malignment on social media or worse: being doxed, Bucha told the newspaper. Girls who do speak insist on anonymity. “The transgender movement has no issue with getting names for their cause,” said Bucha.
University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas during the 2022 Ivy League Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships at Blodgett Pool on Feb. 18, 2022, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (Kathryn Riley/Getty Images)
Lately, transgender athletics have made a splash. Besides Lia Thomas, in August, transgender weightlifter Laurel Hubbard from New Zealand competed in the Summer Olympics, but didn’t finish despite completing the lift. The judges ruled in a split decision that she did not hold the bar steady above her head. Also, Canadian soccer midfielder Rebecca Quinn became the first openly transgender Olympian to compete.
Bucha expressed sympathy for transgender individuals, but feels further efforts are needed to achieve fairness for all.
“I respect that struggle,” Bucha said, pleading for a “mutual respect and appreciation for the history of women’s sports” while offering a message for the transgender community: “Look, we respect you, you are entitled to your opinions. But before you encroach upon the areas in which we have made such progress, let us tell you what was not available to women 60 years ago.”
For remediation, Bucha looks to history. “When I was swimming, there was an outstanding—one of the best—women’s swimmers in the world, Shirley Babashoff, during her time swimming,” said Bucha, harking back to the Montreal games in 1976. “But there was an Eastern German contingent of swimmers, they were all steroid-enhanced, they went to the Olympics.
“They were using performance-enhancing drugs, they were shattering world records, they were getting the Olympic gold medals,” she added. “They displaced Shirley Babashoff from her rightful ability to win as many golds as Mark Spitz, Michael Phelps, and everyone else. They were stripped of their medals once they looked back at how fundamentally unfair it was.”
(Courtesy of Sandra Bucha)
Bucha thinks more people should look at Montreal.
Equal respect ought to be the aim. “Our struggle was, ‘We want to have the same opportunities as men,’” she said. “So, create those women’s swim teams, create those boys swim teams, and … create those teams for transgender swim teams. Allow those transgender athletes to compete against other transgender athletes.
“Or create open competitions, so that all who choose to will engage, as I did back in professional swimming. I knew that I was jumping into a lake to swim against 30 other men. I chose to do that. That wasn’t fundamentally unfair to me, because I chose to be in that competition. We can do the same thing now.”
A single incident of anti-transgender harassment on the Washington, D.C., metro in the past two years has prompted an ad campaign to fight such hate across the city.
The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority in May launched a campaign—funded with money from its $2.9 million annual advertising budget—at stations across the D.C. area pledging to make “Metro safer” by reducing harassment of transgender passengers. One advertisement features a white male with a man bun and beard yelling “transphobic slurs” at a gender-ambiguous person sitting on a train.
“NOT IN OUR HOUSE,” the ad reads while also encouraging D.C.-area straphangers to report such incidents to the Metro Transit Police Department (MTPD).
Yet such incidents have almost never occurred, according to a Washington Free Beacon analysis of public crime data provided by the MTPD and the FBI. Metro police have not recorded a single incident of harassment or violence on the basis of race or gender in 2022 or 2021 and just one anti-transgender bias incident in 2020. Federal data additionally show that over 99 percent of anti-trans incidents in the last decade do not involve white men.
The ad campaign comes as D.C. residents flee public transportation due to fears of seemingly random acts of violence on the metro. Metro ridership has dropped 80 percent since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, which also corresponded with a sharp uptick in violent crime.
Anti-transgender hate crimes in 2020 accounted for less than 3 percent of all hate crimes recorded by the FBI, with black people as the most common offenders.
In the 28 anti-transgender hate crimes in D.C. logged by the FBI in 2020, none of the offenders were white. The same FBI statistics show that in the last 10 years white people have been responsible for just 2 out of the 217 recorded anti-transgender hate crimes in the city.
Source: FBI
Source: FBI
Requests for more information from the WMATA on the ad campaign’s cost went unanswered. Although an employee said the agency does keep records on harassment incidents, that person declined to provide them. An employee of the agency’s anti-hate crime task force told the Free Beacon that he is not supposed to talk to reporters.
The D.C. government announced in April it will increase police presence at Metro facilities as a response to plummeting ridership and a spike in certain violent crimes. According to WMATA data, aggravated assaults doubled from April 2021 to April 2022.
D.C. authorities in 2021 recorded a five-year high of 183 assaults at public transportation facilities. D.C.-area workers’ decisions to work from home or take alternative transit have resulted in a nearly $500 million budget shortfall for the D.C. metro system projected by summer 2023.
Conservative nonprofit group Consumers’ Research is bringing billboards to State Farm’s Las Vegas conference this week and releasing national ads as part of its campaign against the insurance company’s decision to distribute books about sexual orientation to kindergartners.
State Farm partnered with The GenderCool Project to give thousands of books such as A Kids Book About Being Transgender and A Kids Book About Being Non-Binary to children five and older, according to emails leaked by Consumers’ Research. The insurance company ended its partnership with GenderCool only after Consumers’ Research exposed it, the Washington Free Beaconreported last month.
Consumers’ Research executive director Will Hild said that merely ending the partnership is not enough.
“They owe their customers, agents, and parents everywhere real answers and a plan of action,” Hild said.
State Farm is just one of many U.S. companies and elite organizations, including Disney and top law firms, to take left-wing positions on transgenderism and sexuality. Consumers’ Research says that Nike, BlackRock, and American Airlines also profess “woke politics.”
As part of Consumers’ Research’s “Stop Being a Creepy Neighbor” campaign, the nonprofit is paying for a truck to carry a mobile billboard outside State Farm’s conference, as well as for a digital ad and a national television ad. The group wants State Farm to audit programs aimed at children, determine where the books were donated, and notify the public about where children received the books.
Those moves are “the least that State Farm can do to prevent further harm to children and make sure that they don’t have programs like what they do with GenderCool currently happening,” Hild told the Free Beacon. “It helps parents whose kids may have been exposed or are being exposed currently to these materials because of State Farm.”
The books, which State Farm intended to “help diversify classroom, community center, and library bookshelves,” promote the use of “they” as a singular pronoun and teach that “everyone’s journey to understanding their gender is unique to them.”
“Gender is how you feel in your heart and mind, but it may not match what the doctor says when you are born,” reads A Kids Book About Being Non-Binary, which is marketed as age-appropriate for five-year-olds.
Hild said the Consumers’ Research campaign against State Farm is “ongoing.”
“We’re going to continue to remind them of their obligation to their own customers and to America’s parents,” Hild said.
Pizza Hut is exposing children as young as pre-kindergartners to LGBT-themed literature as part of its annual summer reading program.
Big Wig, a book promoted by the restaurant chain as appropriate for children ages pre-K to third grade, “celebrates drag kids, individuality, and self-confidence from the perspective of a fabulous wig,” according to its publisher, Simon and Schuster. Be Amazing: A History of Pride, a book suggested by Pizza Hut for pre-K through first graders, is authored by “Desmond is Amazing,” a self-described 12-year-old “drag kid” who teaches young readers about “brave people that have paved the way for the LGBTQ+ community and encourages readers to be themselves.”
Pizza Hut joins several other corporations who have peddled leftwing ideology about sexual orientation and gender identity as children’s entertainment. State Farm had planned to distribute LGBT-themed books to children through community centers, libraries, and school teachers until a whistleblower’s efforts in May forced them to reverse course. Investigative journalist Chris Rufo revealed in April that Disney has been “adding queerness” to children’s programs. And children’s cartoon Blue’s Clues featured a song for Pride Month sung by a cartoon drag queen, celebrating families with gay, lesbian, transgender, and nonbinary members.
“This is another appalling example of a major corporation propagandizing kids on sexual matters,” Consumers’ Research executive director Will Hild told the Washington Free Beacon. “It’s vile that a pizza company would try to push transgenderism on children. And if this is the quality of their ethics and judgment, what does that say about the quality of their product?”
Consumers’ Research has announced it will post billboards at a Las Vegas conference this week hosted by State Farm as part of a national ad campaign against the insurance company for attempting to distribute the LGBT-themed books Being Transgender, Inclusive, and Non-Binary.
SIOUX FALLS, S.D.—Many politicians turn to social media platforms or television ads to get their message out. But South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) decided they wanted to “take the pulse of the people” themselves, opting to travel door-to-door through a subdivision in Sioux Falls to meet their constituents on June 4 and listen to their concerns.
Noem and Johnson, both Republicans, also wanted to thwart negative ads that have recently begun airing throughout the state.
“The air war is not what wins elections in South Dakota—it’s the ground game,” Johnson told The Epoch Times during his door-to-door tour of the neighborhood. “It is going out and talking to voters and answering questions—this is how victory gets done.”
The top issue for the people of South Dakota is inflation, Noem told The Epoch Times as she walked with Johnson through the neighborhood. She said people are worried about the price of fuel and food—kitchen table issues.
“We are hearing a lot of concern about inflation,” she said. “People feel it every single day.”
Noem and Johnson agree that inflation is “higher than it should be” and blame the current administration, as “trillions of dollars have been spent unnecessarily.”
“We’ve got an administration that has put trillion-dollar package after trillion-dollar package,” Johnson said of national inflation. “I voted against them [spending packages], and we need to focus on needs and not wants at the federal level—that’s what I have been focused on.”
U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem campaign together in a Sioux Falls neighborhood on June 4, 2022. (Jann Falkenstern/The Epoch Times)
Sioux Falls resident Sondra McFadden said she “couldn’t believe her eyes” when she answered the front door of her home and saw the governor and a congressman.
“She’s really here,” she said of the visit. “I just love her [Noem] because she stands up for what she believes, and she looks out for all of South Dakota.”
McFadden said the governor is doing a “fantastic job” in protecting the conservative values that South Dakotans have maintained for many years. She said she’s “worried about the state of the nation” but is thankful to live in the state, and she’s “thankful for her governor.”
McFadden gives the governor credit for “keeping the state open” during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“She kept the state open, which helped the economy during the pandemic,” she said. “I look at other states who locked down and they are so much worse off for it—we are thriving because of the decisions the governor has made for our state.”
Noem said there’s a reason why people are “grateful to live in South Dakota.”
“Our state has the number one economy,” she said. “Everybody works—our incomes are rising faster than in any other state—so we’ve got a great story to tell. It’s a story of helping people make the best decisions for themselves and South Dakota is thriving because of that.”
Johnson agreed.
“The thing I love about South Dakotans is their optimism, and they’ll listen and ask you the tough questions,” he said of his constituents. “But they know how lucky they are to be living in South Dakota. Because of Kristi’s administration, people realize that their freedoms were not reduced here. … We did it right here.”
Neither the governor nor the congressman are fans of the policies of the Biden administration and the president’s latest move to punish states such as South Dakota with reduced funding for approving legislation that outlaws transgender males from competing in girls’ sports.
“It’s a horrific thing to take food off the plates of our children in order to push your agenda,” Noem said. “It’s a dangerous threat—a terrible threat. If he moves forward with this policy, then I will sue them in federal court. And we will win.”
Johnson echoed Noem’s sentiments.
“Biden is trying to use free and reduced school lunches as a lever to compel states to do what you want around transgendered athletes,” he said. “Biden wants to try to punish those kids because South Dakota and other states don’t fall in line with his views. I haven’t found one person in South Dakota who’s buying what he’s selling.”
On June 7, South Dakotans will go to the polls to vote in the primary elections for who they would like to see on the ballot this November. Both incumbents say they are excited to serve their constituents for another term.
“Kristi and I are wired very similarly,” he said of the Republican governor. “One of the reasons we get along so well is that she is a conservative who’s focused on actually solving problems.”
Noem said Johnson is a great advocate for South Dakota.
“He works hard and he cares about people,” she said of Johnson. “He’s doing it for the right reasons.”
Correction: Noem is traveling through Sioux Falls, not Sioux City. The Epoch Times regrets the error.
Survivors of communist regimes warn that as Marxist ideology strengthens its grip on the left, Americans must defend freedom of speech and religion, or they will lose the ability to educate their children.
Marxism has gained a foothold in the American education system through the rise of cancel culture, revisionist history lessons, critical race theory, and divisive gender ideology, survivor of Albanian communism Merita McCormack said Thursday at the Victims of Communism Museum in Washington, D.C. The museum, which is organized by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and opens to the public on June 13, seeks to educate Americans on the 100 million lives taken by communism, the efforts of those who have taken a stand against the ideology, and those who resist communist regimes today. McCormack told the Washington Free Beacon she hopes to protect the next generation from the evils she was exposed to growing up in a communist nation.
“Politically and ideologically, Marxism leads to totalitarianism,” McCormack said. “Parents must teach their children what is true, right, and just, and they must be well informed and have a strong voice in what students learn at schools. Public universities must be held accountable to taxpayers for what they teach.”
The coronavirus pandemic, McCormack said, unveiled the extent of Marxist ideology in public education, which is undermining religious freedom and free speech, as well as the role of parents.
“The pandemic was a heavy cross for this nation as it was for the world, and during the pandemic parents figured out what their children were learning in school,” McCormack said. “Schools should be an extension of family education and should be in harmony with the family. Sadly, currently one can say that we have the American version of Marxism.”
The dangers of communism are self-evident, McCormack said, but the ideology has captured much of the left and forced anticommunists to live on the defensive. Members of the left increasingly support Marxist ideology, according to a Data for Progress poll conducted in January that showed Democrats prefer democratic socialism to capitalism.
Aldona Wos, a former U.S. ambassador to Estonia who immigrated to America from Poland’s communist regime as a child, said Americans must stand against Marxism just as anticommunists have in the century since Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution.
“The greatest danger of communism is that it is an ideology built on lies,” Wos said, “and you must have education to understand that it is a lie.”
Free pre-kindergarten, along with other Biden administration education proposals, could worsen inflation, which has already reached a 40-year high.
Resident Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign promise of universal free preschool would cost the nation more than $350 billion in 10 years, a June study from University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School showed. The move could prove to be inflationary as well, with the Wharton School study concluding it would raise government debt by 2.4 percent in 2053 relative to baseline.
Universal free preschool is one of many Democratic education proposals that could threaten the growing national debt. The Biden administration recently forgave $5.8 billion in debt for students of Corinthian Colleges, a bankrupted for-profit chain of postsecondary-degree schools, leaving the total student debt relief extended by the administration at $25 billion. Critics fear Biden’s loan debt relief measures will worsen inflation.
“Student debt cancellation may be an extremely appealing political talking point, but it is not good policy,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, in an April 27 statement. “It is costly, inflationary, poorly targeted, and fails to address the root problems in our higher education financing system.”
MacGuineas said forgiving $10,000 per person of debt would be as expensive as universal pre-K.
Biden’s plan to expand Pell Grants, a need-based subsidy for students from the federal government, would cost $229 billion over 10 years. Because only 38 percent of Pell Grant recipients complete degrees in eight years, two-thirds of the money could be wasted, according to the Wall Street Journal editorial board.
A drag queen, a communist, and a domestic terrorist rally support for San Francisco’s radical DA as recall looms
SAN FRANCISCO — A drag queen, a communist, and a domestic terrorist walk into a bar. They are joined by several dozen supporters of Chesa Boudin, the radical district attorney who faces a recall election on Tuesday. The mood is lively despite recent polling indicating a majority of the city’s voters want him gone.
Juanita MORE!, the drag queen activist and “denizen of the limelight,” is first to arrive at Zeitgeist, the “unapologetically punk dive” and beer garden in the city’s Mission District. MORE! could be in the running to be named the inaugural drag laureate of San Francisco, an official position created days earlier by Mayor London Breed (D.).
Angela Davis, the former FBI most-wanted fugitive and Communist Party vice-presidential candidate whose other accolades include the Soviet Union’s Lenin Peace Prize, takes a seat in the back with her assistant. A Washington Free Beacon reporter is among those instructed by Boudin aides to prevent overeager admirers from pestering Davis, who recently returned from a gig in Denmark where she had been invited to lecture the Danes about their role in promoting “racial capitalism.”
Boudin arrives moments later with his father, domestic terrorist David Gilbert. Gilbert was paroled last year after disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo (D., N.Y.) commuted his 75-years-to-life sentence for felony murder. Boudin’s father and mother, Kathy Boudin, were convicted for their roles in a 1981 armored car robbery that left two police officers and a Brink’s guard dead. Just 14 months old when his parents were arrested, Chesa was raised by Weather Underground leaders Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. Naturally, he ended up at Yale Law.
The demographics of the crowd are about what you’d expect: boomer hippies, dirtbag leftists, trust fund kids, weirdos. Gilbert and Davis chat in the beer garden until she is called to the microphone to rally the faithful. Like most San Francisco residents, they’re wearing face masks outside.
“I am convinced that we are the majority,” Davis says toward the end of a low-energy speech before she is hustled off to another scheduled appearance. A poll conducted days earlier for the San Francisco Examiner suggests otherwise: 56 percent of likely voters favor recalling Boudin, while 62 percent disapprove of his job performance as district attorney. “Barring a literal miracle, Boudin is done,” writes Gil Duran, the paper’s editorial page editor.
The district attorney takes the stage and phones it in. Whereas most left-wing radicals are at least somewhat charismatic, Boudin is just another boring nerd, a Marxist Mitt Romney. His admirers in the local and national media may describe him as “a potential left-wing superstar,” but he’ll never be accepted into the Squad. “One of the reasons I know we’re going to win is that my wife Valerie told me that a long time ago and she’s never wrong,” the politician yucks.
“There’s a lot of pundits, a lot of journalists who think they know it all, who are telling us that it’s over,” Boudin says. This elicits a few angry boos and one emphatic “Fuck them!” That’s about as punk rock as it gets. He goes on to denounce the recall effort, spearheaded by the former chairwoman of the San Francisco Democratic Party, as the work of “Republican billionaires.” He boasts of talking to voters in Spanish, a language he mastered while working as a translator for Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez, and touts an internal poll showing the race tied at 47 percent. He has one simple question: “Are we gonna win?”
Many of Nancy Pelosi’s constituents are hoping the answer is no. Breed, the city’s Democratic mayor, is probably one of them, even though she won’t come out and say it. She has been feuding with Boudin since late last year, when the district attorney opposed her efforts to be “less tolerant of all the bullshit that has destroyed our city,” where burglaries are up almost 50 percent since 2019. Mary Jung, the lifelong Democrat leading the recall effort, last year celebrated the birth of her granddaughter amid a spate of anti-Asian hate crimes and worried it wasn’t safe to go out for walks with the stroller.
San Francisco certainly doesn’t feel very safe. Walking south from Tenderloin to City Hall in broad daylight, you will encounter an array of drug dealers and eventually lose count of all the people openly lighting up or tying off or passed out in the middle of the sidewalk. You’ll see tent encampments in practically every side street and alley. Garbage and filth everywhere. (Maybe that’s why everyone wears a mask outside.) You’ll try to convince yourself that San Franciscans are just unusually negligent about picking up after their large dogs.
Boudin’s defenders seem to think that because most of the city’s problems predate his election in 2019, it would be unreasonable for voters to conclude he’s not the right Democrat to fix them, or to question his radical approach to criminal justice reform, which critics argue has been too accommodating of actual criminals at the expense of victims. A major catalyst for the recall effort was the case of Troy McAlister, a serial criminal who killed two women while driving drunk in a stolen vehicle on New Year’s Eve in 2020. McAlister was free after Boudin’s office in April of that year negotiated a plea deal on an armed robbery charge, even though he had been arrested multiple times afterwards, including for car theft just days before the fatal crash.
“That was the last straw,” says Richie Greenberg, an activist who spearheaded an earlier unsuccessful campaign to recall Boudin. “He should have resigned. It would have spared the city all of this mess.” Even in a progressive bastion such as San Francisco, Boudin is “not even on the spectrum” in terms of what voters are willing to tolerate, Greenberg tells the Free Beacon during an interview at a coffee shop near the sprawling homeless assemblage and open-air drug carnival outside the U.S. Health and Human Services building at United Nations Plaza. “The majority of San Franciscans are just horrified by what we have been subjected to and why we’re saying we have to stop this.”
Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) has vowed to fight back in the wake of reports that President Joe Biden and his administration planned to tie school lunch program funding to policies that adhered to radical gender ideology.
Touting his state’s 2022-2023 “Freedom First Budget,” DeSantis said that he would make sure Florida was prepared to fight back if the Biden administration stripped funding for public school lunch programs over his state’s move to bar teachers from presenting classroom instruction on gender identity and sexual identity to children in kindergarten through third grade.
“In Florida, we are fighting against Biden’s intentionally destructive policies like denying school lunches for states that refuse to implement woke gender ideology in the schools,” DeSantis tweeted on Sunday.
In Florida, we are fighting against Biden’s intentionally destructive policies like denying school lunches for states that refuse to implement woke gender ideology in the schools. pic.twitter.com/YXpTky75Jn
“We’re prepared for what Biden throws our way,” DeSantis said. “And, you know, yes, part of it’s the inflation and the gas — part of it are intentionally destructive policies like trying to deny school lunch programs for states that don’t do transgender ideology in the schools, I mean, give me a break!”
“Totally off his rocker to be doing that,” DeSantis continued. “We’re fighting on that, don’t worry. So we’re just prepared to be able to defend the taxpayers and the hard-working people in the state of Florida, and I couldn’t be prouder for doing that.”
DeSantis was responding to reports that Biden planned to link programs that provide free or low-cost lunches to students to school and state policies, demanding that they adhere to transgender non-discrimination policies. According to the USDA, the move comes as a result of the Biden administration’s expansion — by executive order — of Title IX to include discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation.
“Schools awarded money from the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), an agency within USDA, must specify in their policies that discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation is prohibited, the department announced in May. It also said allegations of such discrimination must be investigated,” Fox News reported.
Fight for Schools Executive Director Ian Prior told Fox News, “What you’re seeing here is really the Biden administration saying, ‘You’re going to do what I want or I’m going to take your lunch money.’ For the federal government to come in and really tie school nutrition and school lunch programs to this radical ideology is terrifying, and it’s appalling.”
DeSantis is not the only governor fighting back in the wake of those reports — Governor Kristi Noem (R-SD) has threatened to sue if the Biden administration withholds lunch funding over moves to protect female students in sports.
Today, Education and Labor Committee Republican Leader Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Banks (R-Ind.) and Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education Subcommittee Republican Leader Burgess Owens (R-Utah) sent letters to the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and NewsGuard Inc. seeking additional information on the January 25th agreement that would put NewsGuard’s ‘anti-misinformation’ product in the classrooms of AFT’s more than 1.6 million members.
The letters seek information on the agreement, the application of NewsGuard’s product in the classroom and the extent to which local officials and parents were consulted about the rollout.
“We can’t let this kind of left-wing propaganda into our schools, or let groups condemn so-called ‘misinformation’ while peddling it themselves. I’m not surprised that AFT is teaming up with an organization that ranks Chinese state-run media sites higher than American conservative sites, but I refuse to let it happen without a fight. AFT has long demonstrated that its priority is politics, not education. It is painfully clear that NewsGuard does not have the judgment necessary to teach our nation’s children how to tell truth from fiction,” Rep. Foxx said.
“The left is obsessed with indoctrinating kids. AFT has decided that NewsGuard, whose leadership falsely dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop story as ‘Russian disinformation,’ deserves to be empowered to tell children what is and isn’t ‘misinformation.’ Political advocacy groups should focus on people who are old enough to vote. They have no place in taxpayer funded public schools. House Republicans must use our oversight power to keep politics out of classrooms, and I am pleased to partner with Ranking Member Foxx and Rep. Owens on this important effort,” Rep. Banks stated.
“The collaboration between Randi Weingarten’s American Federation of Teachers and NewsGuard is not an honest attempt to separate fact from fiction. It’s yet another coordinated effort to politicize our academic institutions. Using biased ratings to referee free expression and opposing political viewpoints is un-American and harms the education of our children. I’m proud to work with Ranking Member Foxx and Chairman Banks to call out this alarming partnership,”said Rep. Owens.
The government-funded research project that created transgender monkeys is in turmoil after a Washington Free Beacon report exposed its existence, internal emails show.
Just days after the Free Beacon report on the study that injected male monkeys with female hormones, the study’s lead researcher “expressed concerns” about publishing the results because his or her name would appear on the final report, according to internal communications obtained by the Free Beacon through a Freedom of Information Act request. Professor Mauricio Martins, who heads the study for Scripps Research, informed the National Institutes of Health of the development in a Jan. 19 email, complaining that his monkey-based research to determine why transgender women have high rates of HIV was “being twisted and berated by people who are not qualified to judge its merit.”
The NIH official who received the email, Dr. Jeff Cummins, told Martins he stood by the study and called the Free Beacon‘s story “misinformation.”
“Unfortunately, these are the times in which we live,” Cummins wrote in his Jan. 20 response to Martins. “I am amazed by the misinformation that is so quickly spread on social media.”
The emails are the latest example of public backlash derailing the Biden administration’s radical spending initiatives. After the Free Beaconexposed in February that the Biden administration was funding the distribution of crack pipes to promote racial equity, for example, the New York Timesreported that the “uproar” over the program “derailed” the administration’s entire drug policy.
Cummins did not respond to a Free Beacon inquiry on what was “misinformation.” A spokeswoman for Scripps Biomedical Research, which now operates in partnership with the University of Florida, told the Free Beacon the lead researcher had “concerns about the negative impact of prior media coverage and subsequent politicization of the research.”
The NIH redacted the lead researcher’s name from the now-public emails, and the researchers have yet to publish their findings from the study, which stopped receiving funding on April 1.
The initial Free Beacon report detailed how NIH-funded researchers at UF Scripps Biomedical Research injected male monkeys with feminizing hormone drugs to determine why transgender women have high rates of HIV. Researchers then tested the monkeys to determine if their immune systems were weakened in response to the simian immunodeficiency virus—the monkey equivalent of HIV.
The NIH-funded study faced criticism from animal rights groups, government accountability organizations, and transgender activists. Fox News host Tucker Carlson covered the Free Beacon story in a January segment with an official from PETA, which slammed the study as pointless and cruel.
“It’s an experiment that an eighth-grade science student could figure out is totally meaningless,” said Kathy Guillermo, vice president of the animal rights group.
The University of Florida said its researchers “stand behind its relevance.”
“This important research is necessary to stay ahead of a global epidemic that has cost an estimated 35 million lives since 1981, and continues to affect an estimated 38 million people globally who are living with HIV,” the group told the Free Beacon.
Cummins defended the study in internal emails, assuring Martins his efforts to address a “critical knowledge gap in gender-affirming hormone therapy” are “incredibly important.”
Martins disclosed in the emails that he was caught off guard by the source of the backlash.
“To my surprise, the segments in question prompted a backlash on Twitter by the transgender community, who stands to gain the most by the research outlined,” Martins wrote in the Jan. 19 email to Cummins.
The transgender monkey study is a part of a larger effort from the NIH to counter the spread of HIV in the transgender community, whose members are 49 times more likely to be infected with the disease than nontransgender individuals, according to the agency. Other NIH studies include a $155,000 project with a University of Alabama researcher to study how testosterone treatment for women weakens disease-fighting microorganisms in the vagina. A project at Emory University received $230,000 from the agency to study the rectum immune cells of transgender people.
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is run by Dr. Anthony Fauci, awarded $477,121 to the research project between December 2021 and April 2022. The NIH division acquires 400 to 600 rhesus macaque monkeys each year from a South Carolina island leased by Charles River Laboratories, which has a $27.5 million federal contract. The transgender monkey study used rhesus monkeys, although researchers acquired them from the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center.
Researchers kept the transgender monkeys alive after the study and returned them to their colony at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center, according to documents obtained through the information request. The center did not respond to inquiries on the status of the monkeys after the hormone treatments.
The Biden administration is requiring schools to comply with its LGBT policies or lose billions in federal funding for school lunches.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service announced in May it will prevent low-income students from participating in its National School Lunch Program if their public school does not adopt the administration’s interpretation of Title IX, which holds that the federal civil rights law’s provision against discrimination based on sex includes designations of sexual orientation and gender identity. The move was originally reported by The Center Square.
A spokeswoman for Florida governor Ron DeSantis (R.) said the Biden administration’s decision to “withhold food from disadvantaged children in order to advance a deranged political agenda” was “appalling.”
“We will not allow Biden to force Floridians to choose between children’s food and parents’ rights,” DeSantis’s press secretary Christina Pushaw told the Washington Free Beacon. “That is the kind of ‘decision’ that a totalitarian regime would force upon its citizenry.”
South Dakota governor Kristi Noem (R.) told the Free Beacon her state will take legal action.
“Joe Biden has threatened to take away children’s school lunch money to pursue his radical agenda,” Noem said. “He’s targeting states like ours that make it clear biological men do NOT belong in girls’ bathrooms and sports. If you act on this, Joe, we’ll see you in court and we will win.”
Joe Biden has threatened to take away children’s school lunch money to pursue his radical agenda.
He’s targeting states like ours that make it clear biological men do NOT belong in girls’ bathrooms and sports.
Critics of the administration’s decision said it could unnecessarily harm disadvantaged students. Christian K-12 schools that participate in the NSLP can apply for a religious exemption, but public and nonreligious private schools must follow the new rules or lose their funding.
“All people should be treated with dignity and respect, but it’s wrong for the federal government to take away free meals from economically disadvantaged students if their schools do not embrace radical gender ideology,” Greg Baylor, a senior counsel at the Alliance Defending Freedom, told the Washington Free Beacon.
The announcement builds on President Joe Biden’s Day One Executive Order on Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation, which permits transgender students to use male or female bathrooms and play sports with either sex. Biden’s executive order drew on the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, which altered the meaning of “sex” in Title VII to include sexual orientation and gender identity.
The Biden administration will also force schools that receive funds from FNS to investigate accusations of sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination. Students at colleges and universities who reject the Biden administration’s definition of sex could also lose their Federal Student Aid.
“Any discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in FNS programs will be handled as sex discrimination,” a USDA spokeswoman told the Free Beacon.
Baylor suspects most public schools will comply with the new interpretation as they heavily rely on federal funding. He encouraged parents to submit their concerns to the Department of Education, which is expected to issue new Title IX protections soon that could permit transgender individuals to access sex-segregated spaces.
Jonathan Butcher, a fellow in education at the Heritage Foundation, said the Biden administration’s interpretation of Title IX would also prohibit schools from informing parents of their child’s decision to assume a different gender.
“It is a parent’s right to know what their children are doing or what sort of health services or even counseling services are being provided to their children in a school setting,” Butcher said.
Parents Defending Education director of outreach Erika Sanzi called the Title IX decision “preposterous.”
“The notion that schools will not receive funding for student meals if they refuse to let biological males use the girls’ bathroom and compete against girls in athletics is so preposterous, it sounds like parody,” Sanzi said.
Update June 2, 2022, at 10:15a.m. and 2:35 p.m.: This piece has been updated with a comment from Gov. Kristi Noem (R., S.D.) and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R., Fla.).
Actor and outspoken Christian Kirk Cameron recently blasted America’s public school system in an interview with Fox News.
Cameron — whose new documentary “The Homeschool Awakening” premieres Monday, June 13 — told Fox News, “The problem is that public school systems have become so bad. It’s sad to say they’re doing more for grooming, for sexual chaos and the progressive Left than any real educating about the things that most of us want to teach our kids.”
Thus, as Cameron explained in the interview and in his movie, the solution to the poor quality of public education is to homeschool your kids. He also took issue with those who say only experts, or the government, should be responsible for American school children’s education.
“And that’s just a fundamental difference in the way that we look at who has been entrusted with the sacred responsibility of raising our children. … Is it the parents or is it the government?” he said to Fox.
Cameron also blasted public education for “destroying” certain institutions and patriotism in America.
“And you can take your pick. Just go down the list. The things that are destroying the family, destroying the church, destroying a love for our great country: Critical Race Theory, teaching kids to pick their pronouns and decide whether or not they want to be a boy or a girl, the 1619 Project,” he said.
“If we send our children to Rome to be educated … we shouldn’t be surprised if they come back Romans,” he added. “If we want them to love God and love their neighbor and feel gratitude and thankful that they live in the United States of America, the freest country on earth, then you’ve got to teach them those things. … I realized that there was no better way for our family to do that … than to bring them home and join in with this rich, robust community, with tons of curriculum to be able to have the flexibility and freedom to raise our kids the way we wanted them to be raised.”
The father of six admitted some days are more difficult than others, but said that it was worth it.
“Yes, there are hard days,” he explained. “Yes, there are times when you just feel like pulling your hair out. But it’s nothing compared to wanting to go back and do it all over again. If you see that your children went down a road and you can’t pull them back, [asking] … how did they lose their faith? How did they get pulled into an ideology that undermines everything that is going to lead to their success?”
“They learn to reject God … they learn to reject our country. And how did that happen? Well, that’s the kind of regret that we don’t want as parents,” Cameron added. “And so, if we’re willing to put in some extra effort and time now, we will be so glad that we did and we’ll lift our hands in gratitude and say, ‘Thank you that I woke up and I saw the light.’ And millions of parents are.”
Leftist critics of Cameron have suggested that he is allegedly taking part in a racist plot to segregate society — even if unwitting.
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kmann332151 day ago: And with all the children going to private schools or being homeschooled, we probably have education budget surplus, right? So the government can offer vouchers, offer a tax cut, or even put in school security systems. Reply17
ShadowBaby🍩☕🎺🎵1 day ago: That’s what I’ve been saying – we’re freeing up resources, right? By removing the kinds of kids the establishment hates anyway, right?Reply4Show 1 more reply
steve34911 day ago: What a great evening with several actors speaking out in support of America and dedication to The Lord. Thank you Kirk.Reply21
leftistsmakemequeasy1 day ago“And that’s just a fundamental difference in the way that we look at who has been entrusted with the sacred responsibility of raising our children. … Is it the parents or is it the government?” Bingo.Reply211 reply
CinziaV1 day ago: Kirk has been championing homeschooling for a long time and he is absolutely 💯% correct. God bless him. Keep it up Kirk!Reply22
kgraham4606341 day ago: I home school my boys in the in the 1980’s and 1990’s because I saw what the public schools were teaching back then. My eldest went to Cal-Poly and got his Computer Engineering Degree and my middle son got his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and then received his Master also at Cal-Poly. They have g…See moreReply40
TheWayisNarrow1 day ago: I homeschooled my four in the 90’s and they are all successful. One is a systems manager for programming code for Comcast, one is a chiropractor, another is a paralegal soon to be court reporter and the other a CFO of family business and homeschools her children. They are all literate and patriotic…See moreReply2
blsinsc53721 day ago: Congratulations on your Family’s success! I would bet that with such a grounded foundation, your boys would have been equally successful had they remained in Public Schools but with YOU there to guide them. One of my college Professors said at the beginning of a semester “I can only give you the …See moreReply1
Our country is currently facing a great threat. A new enemy has emerged from the shadows that seeks to destroy and intimidate their way to a transformed state, and country, that you and I would hardly recognize.
This enemy is the radical vigilante woke mob that will steamroll anything and anyone in their way. Their blatant attacks on the American way of life are clear and intensifying: stifling dissent, public shaming, rampant violence, and a perverted version of history.
A group that will, literally, tear down monuments and buildings but — perhaps in an even more sinister way — tear down the American spirit itself. They go after the family unit, parental rights, traditional moral values, the church, and fact-based education.
Over the past few years, we’ve watched horrified as this group has attempted to brainwash our children into thinking we live in an evil, racist, irredeemable country.
We listened to them deny science and data to exert political theater all the while trampling over personal liberties enshrined in the Constitution.
We saw them take to the streets for an entire summer like outlaws burning, looting, and destroying everything in sight while being told they were “mostly peaceful” and “passionate.”
We watched Big Tech moguls in Silicon Valley be the arbiters of truth – deciding who gets to speak and who gets silenced through the digital public square.
We listened to the legacy media muffle legitimately verifiable news stories that didn’t align with their preferred narrative, only to watch the truth trickle out months later at a more politically expedient time.
Well, friend, the time for listening and watching from the sidelines is over.
This enemy has taken over media, educational institutions, corporate boards, professional sports, foundations, and professional institutions. They have left no corner of our lives untouched. But all hope is not lost.
We The People still have a say. We know the truth, you and I, about America and the country she is and can be. We must fight to defeat these false pretenses and predetermined narratives.
I am choosing to counter this enemy with faith, with reason, and with freedom. As Governor of the Free State of Florida, I have chosen to lead with a vision that builds America up rather than tears it down.
Together we can ensure that our children are raised to know they live in the greatest state in the nation, the greatest country in the world and that they have an opportunity to continue making them even greater.
No doubt that the Buffalo shooting is tragic and motivated by hate, but retired Vanderbilt University professor Carol M. Swain believes we need to address the underlying issues that create this type of hate and division. She said our leaders need to bring people together by promoting an American identity instead of pushing identity politics.
“In that book, “The New White Nationalism,” I argue that we needed to reject identity politics and multiculturalism,” Swain said during an interview with NTD’s Capitol Report. “In America, we need to focus on the American national identity. And I think that that is where we need to be.”
“I think we are responsible, that because we are not addressing issues and grievances and problems in a way that brings people together, we are creating an atmosphere where these types of incidents will continue to occur,” Swain said.
On May 14, Payton Gendron, an 18-year-old white male, shot and killed 10 at a supermarket and left three injured; 11 who were shot were black. Gendron described himself as a white supremacist.
According to the manifesto Gendron posted online, he said he chose Buffalo because of strict laws governing gun ownership there and because it has a large black population.
Swain said the Buffalo incident should be looked at in the context of broader hate crimes. She also thinks that there needs to be less focus on inclusion, equity initiatives, and the differences among groups, and a greater focus on what unites us as Americans.
“What happened was tragic. But we also need to look at the subway incident, we also need to look at the hate crimes that take place involving other groups. And we need to look at ourselves and our leaders and how they’re responding,” Swain said.
“Right now, we have the critical race theory, the diversity, equity, inclusion being pushed upon the population in a way that divides people, it creates racial animosity and hatred.”
A man on a bike rides past a city truck on fire outside the Kenosha County Courthouse during riots following the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis., on Aug. 23, 2020. (Mike De Sisti/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel via USA TODAY via Reuters)
Swain said political leaders are stoking divisions and allowing those on the left who vandalized business and federal buildings in the 2020 riots to get away with violence.
“As long as politicians see political advantage to dividing people along racial lines, I think you’re going to have young people, you know, that have grievances, and they see racial double standards, and they get angrier and angrier,” Swain said.
“What we find is that, in this environment, the political parties are divided to a large extent. The Democrats see political advantage to dividing people along racial and ethnic lines. And with the Republicans, they’re too afraid to stand up.”
A crucial step toward building unity is allowing for free speech and open dialogue, she said.
“Unfortunately, we have created a society where people can’t talk. We would be much better off if we could talk freely,” said Swain.
“If we stood up for principles, old-fashioned Judeo-Christian principles, as well as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution, if we kept taking things back to principled responses, then I think there would be less animosity,” she added.
President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden went to Buffalo to visit the community that lost loved ones in the shooting. In his speech, the president called the shooting in Buffalo an act of “domestic terrorism,” invoked the Jan. 6 incident, and lumped the two together under the banner of white supremacy.
Swain called Biden’s remarks “pandering” saying, “When I look at Jan. 6, [it] has nothing to do with this young man in Buffalo, absolutely nothing.”
The vast majority of Jan. 6 protesters said that they were at the Capitol to voice their objection to the 2020 election irregularities and lack of election integrity.
Long-awaited Title IX rule changes may eliminate due process protections, open women’s spaces to biological men
Popular opposition may be delaying the Biden Education Department’s push to expand Title IX protections to transgender Americans, experts say.
A spokesman told the Washington Free Beacon that the department plans to release updated Title IX rules in June, after twice delaying the rollout. The rule change is expected to erase Trump-era due process protections for sexual misconduct investigations on college campuses. But it could also allow transgender individuals to access sex-segregated spaces, like bathrooms. Title IX stakeholders believe the unpopularity of the latter provision could explain the arrested rollout.
“The administration may be looking at the polls showing that Americans overwhelmingly do not support this radical redefinition of a law meant to provide basic civil rights protections to women and girls in educational institutions,” Independent Women’s Forum senior policy analyst Inez Stepman told the Free Beacon. “This delay is an attempt to evade political responsibility for their unpopular policies.”
The delay could pose a political problem for the Biden administration. President Joe Biden promised during the 2020 campaign to bring to a “quick end” to the Trump-era rules. Critics say those rules prolonged investigations into sexual misconduct and delayed case resolutions. A coalition of activist groups has pressed Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona to expedite the department’s Title IX overhaul.
As of this writing, the proposed rule changes are still under review by the Office of Management and Budget. Sarah Parshall Perry, who served under former president Donald Trump in the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, said the extended review process is a “hopeful sign” that the office is pushing the Education Department for more information on the rule change, or else has “sent the Department back to the drawing board.”
Candice Jackson, another Trump Education Department alum, suggests that the delay could be political, with the White House “looking ahead to the fall election … and wanting to bury this Title IX explosion under other news.”
But a June release could suggest the opposite. In addition to being LGBT Pride Month, this June marks the 50th anniversary of Title IX. Expanding Title IX to cover transgender people in June would fit the Biden administration’s pattern of pegging policy to politically advantageous dates. The president demanded that all American troops be pulled out of Afghanistan before the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks. The White House announced “Independence from COVID” on July 4, 2021. And Biden this week signed an executive order on police reform to mark the second anniversary of George Floyd’s death.
The department’s refusal to publicize its delay shows the administration’s fear of being held accountable for postponing a change that Biden promised to bring early in his time in office, Perry said.
“The fact that Politico broke the story that the new Title IX is once again being delayed, rather than the Department of Education publicizing that delay itself, indicates to me that they’re not keen to be held accountable for the delay,” said Perry, now a legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
A second period of public comment will come after the Education Department announces its rules. The department will then have a final opportunity to edit the rules before submitting the final change in the Federal Register.
With the end of the academic year in sight, an overwhelming number of educators are planning to close the book on their teaching careers.
Much of this stems from post-pandemic classroom behavioral challenges with students and ongoing staff shortages that create excessive workloads for teachers.
Many educators who have 25 years or more under their belt are opting to retire, but even less seasoned ones are walking away and choosing different career paths.
Back in February, the National Education Association (NEA) released a study conducted by GBAO Strategies that revealed a startling 55 percent of teachers planned to leave their profession ahead of schedule.
The NEA is the most prominent teachers union in the United States and represents 3 million educators.
Widespread educator shortages pre-date the arrival of COVID-19, but the pandemic also served as the last straw for many, kicking off the trend of an early departure.
A RAND study from January 2021 showed nearly a quarter of those surveyed expressed the desire to quit after just one year of teaching during the pandemic.
Students and parents arrive masked for the first day of the school year at Grant Elementary School in Los Angeles, California, on Aug. 16, 2021. (Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)
The average national turnover rate was only 16 percent before COVID-19. However, in 2021, that number jumped to 25 percent.
This year, 80 percent of NEA members reported that unfilled job openings at schools have led to more work obligations for the educators who’ve chosen to stay in their profession.
“I think people are leaving because it’s all too much. It’s a firestorm. It’s all eroding,” Heidi Rickard told The Epoch Times.
Rickard has been an educator since 1999. After spending some time teaching in Colorado Springs, she put down roots in the Alameda Unified school district in the San Francisco bay area.
She explained that many veteran teachers “just can’t take it” anymore and are leaving due, in part, to the scale of mental health challenges students brought back to the classroom after two years of online learning.
“As a veteran teacher, when the best of my best isn’t working, that’s so defeating,” Rickard said.
Two years of excessive screen time at home and the disengagement of online learning have left students struggling, falling behind, and adrift in a sea of depression.
COVID-19 and its subsequent restrictions created a mental health crisis for youth, which is now manifesting as aggressive or excessively troublesome behavior in the classroom.
In October 2021, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the Children’s Hospital Association acknowledged the pandemic-fueled decline in child and adolescent mental health had become a national emergency.
Students walk to their classrooms at a public middle school in Los Angeles, Calif., on Sept. 10, 2021. (Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)
And the dire shortage of counselors in school districts to assist students has added to this.
Rickard noted, “We haven’t had a counselor all year. Nobody even applied.”
Findings from a joint study on the role of school counselors from the Connecticut State Department of Education, the Connecticut School Counselor Association, and the Center for School Counseling Outcome Research and Evaluation at the University of Massachusetts Amherst revealed schools with fewer students and more counselors had lower rates of student suspensions and disciplinary actions.
Former superintendent, educator, and school counselor Gary Marks spent decades working in Nebraska schools. He agreed that student counseling and support for teachers in the classroom have hit a critical point.
“You need way more counselors when you’re having all these mental health issues,” Marks told The Epoch Times.
For example, he pointed to where his grandchildren go to school in Tennessee’s Farragut school district, which has only two counselors for about 600 students.
He also thinks a general lack of respect for educators underscores why more are leaving their jobs early, and others are reluctant to apply.
“The respect situation is just a huge issue,” he said.
Marks was candid when asked about the difficulties of hiring new talent in schools. “I don’t know right now, given the way the world is, if I’d be interested in being a classroom teacher.”
Yet the struggle to keep existing educators and hire new ones is only half the battle. A new report from the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education indicates that university students pursuing teaching degrees are declining.
In 2019, U.S. colleges awarded fewer than 90,000 undergraduate degrees in education. That’s down from nearly 200,000 a year in the 1970s. Over the past 10 years alone, the number of people completing traditional teacher preparation programs has dropped by 35 percent.
“This is a five-alarm crisis,” said NEA president Becky Pringle.
One of the hurdles administrators face amid the staff scarcity is a lengthy certification and training process even after qualified university graduates apply to teach.
“I want to continue teaching—however, I’m being forced out,” Lisa Carley Hotaling told The Epoch Times.
Having taught in Michigan and New York, Hotaling found herself between a rock and a hard place after she took a teaching job in California as an emergency hire in the Alameda Unified school district.
Despite already having a master’s degree and more than a decade of education and classroom experience, she still has to take the California Basic Skills Test (CBEST) and go back to school specifically for her master’s in education to continue teaching.
“That only gives me a one year credential,” Hotaling explained. “[Then] I’ll be required to return to school to do what I’m already doing in the classroom. It makes no sense. And I have to pay for further education on top of it?”
Last year, the Golden State eliminated the requirement for the CBEST and the California Subject Matter Exams for Teachers (CSET) to earn a teaching credential, so long as the applicants complete approved coursework.
A student takes a standardized test in a file photo. (SIAATH/Shutterstock)
Yet, some districts still want their educators to complete the additional screening, despite a shortage of educators.
“It’s very tricky to fill positions,” Heather Dutton told The Epoch Times.
Dutton has been a math instructor for nine years in the Community Learning Center Schools in the San Francisco Bay area.
She explained a lot of time is spent training a teacher who may leave if they’re not a good fit. This happens more often with newer teachers because Dutton says the first three years are profoundly challenging.
“I went into COVID with seven years of teaching experience. If your first three hellish years are on top of a pandemic, it would just crush you,” Dutton said.
“We lost a lot of teachers before the pandemic anyway, maybe 30 percent. But if you started in the middle of this horrible pandemic … people think it’s just too hard and can get paid as much or more doing something else.”
And the lack of substitute teachers has created a disproportionately high workload for the educators who remain.
“The sub [teacher] shortage is awful. We haven’t had subs all year, I think the pool of them dried up during COVID,” Dutton noted.
Additionally, Rickard says the lack of substitutes makes it nearly impossible to be gone for even a day.
“I feel guilty if I have to take a day off. There’s literally no one to cover. It leaves everybody in a bind.”
Dutton mentioned that in the high schools in her district, only three teachers would return in the fall. The rest will be new hires.
“If all the veteran people give up—where will we be?” Rickard asked.
Self-described anarchists took credit for vandalizing four pro-life churches in Olympia, Wash., last weekend, referring to the houses of worship as “patriarchal sex abuse cults” that perpetuate the “violence of forced birth.”
Puget Sound Anarchists, a website that publishes writings from “anarchists and anti-authoritarians in the Pacific Northwest,” shared an anonymous post declaring a Mormon church, two evangelical churches, and a Catholic church had been given “facelifts” Sunday morning before services for their “ties to anti-abortion ‘crisis pregnancy centers.'” The churches, according to the anarchists, “are terrified of people exercising bodily autonomy—whether aborting unwanted pregnancies or taking gender-affirming hormones/surgery or fucking whomever we want—because they need the rigid hierarchy of the family as the basic unit of control.”
“We dumped red paint over the entryways and left messages of ‘If abortions aren’t safe, then neither are you,’ ‘Abort the church,’ and ‘God loves abortion,'” the anarchists said. “We are not appealing to state power for an end to patriarchal violence, but threatening: ‘If abortions aren’t safe, then neither are you.'”
The attack comes as churches, pro-life advocates, and some Supreme Court justices face heightened threats after a leaked decision revealed the Court is expected to overturn Roe v. Wade next month. Arsonists firebombed a pro-life advocacy group’s office in Wisconsin days after, spray-painting, “If abortions aren’t safe, then you aren’t either” on its façade. A Department of Homeland Security memo that surfaced last week showed the agency is readying for potential violence in the wake of the decision.
Cean Williard, an executive pastor at Harbor Church, one of the four churches vandalized, told the Washington Free Beacon parish leaders were “saddened that any group would choose to communicate through intimidation, vandalism, or threats of violence” but that the “attack has not altered [their] resolve.”
“All human beings are created in the image of God from the moment of conception with unique personhood, dignity, value, and worth. God has declared in his Word that he hates the shedding of innocent blood,” Williard said in a statement. “Therefore, we are deeply opposed to the practice of abortion, which is the murder of image bearers of God. We will continue to stand in opposition to this horrible practice.”
The Olympia anarchists said even though abortion will remain legal in Washington if Roe is overturned, “there are still local enemies who are doing everything in their power to make it as difficult and inaccessible as possible.” They said such “enemies are vulnerable and easy to find,” before sharing the address of a crisis pregnancy center and listing Olympia businesses that have donated to it. Abortion has been legal in Washington State since 1970.
The anarchists described crisis pregnancy centers, which typically provide free pre- and post-natal care to young mothers, as “religious fake clinics that manipulate mostly poor people into having & keeping children they don’t want or aren’t ready for and marrying whomever impregnated them whether or not that relationship is healthy or safe.”
“Crisis pregnancy centers are exploitative and serve the aims of upholding the patriarchal family, a primary site of violence against women, queers, and children,” they wrote.
The anarchists signed their missive “Jane’s Revenge”—the same name used by the vandals who threw a Molotov cocktail into the pro-life office in Wisconsin, according to the Washington Times.
Puget Sound Anarchists has posted other anonymous submissions admitting to crimes of property destruction. In July 2021, Portland vandals shared pictures of an attack they launched on police squad cars, smashing a dozen cruisers’ windows, windshields, lights, and side-view mirrors.
“We call on all abolitionists to take the defunding and disarming of the pigs into their own hands,” the submitters wrote. “Be bold! Sabotage is fun!”
A legal notice on Puget Sound Anarchists states, “We do not condone or promote illegal, violent, and unlawful behavior or actions, or acts of intimidation against individuals or groups.” On its contact page, the editors say they do not respond to media requests.
Auto and home insurance giant State Farm has encouraged hundreds of employees to donate books promoting transgenderism to young children to their local schools and libraries, according to an email leaked by a whistleblower.
The email, obtained by nonprofit organization Consumers’ Research, states that the company partnered with transgender youth advocacy group The GenderCool Project in a campaign “to help diversify classroom, community center, and library bookshelves” with a collection of books centered on the “national conversation about Being Transgender, Inclusive and Non-Binary.”
“The project’s goal is to increase representation of LGBTQ+ books and support our communities in having challenging, important and empowering conversations with children Age 5+,” Jose Soto, a corporate responsibility analyst for State Farm in Florida, wrote in the email dated Jan. 18.
One of the three books The GenderCool Project sought to promote is “A Kids Book About Being Transgender,” which encourages readers as young as 5 to “shake off whatever confusion, skepticism, concern, or biases you may have” about “transgender kids.” The book suggests that a child’s feeling that he or she is of a different gender should be validated rather than challenged, arguing that feelings sometimes “work more like our intuition or insight” that “allow us to understand something without having to think about it.”
“One day I look up ‘boy who feels like girl’ and found stories of people who were just like me,” the book reads. “That’s the first time I heard the word transgender. I realized I wasn’t alone. The feeling I had been a girl finally made sense.”
In the email, Soto asked for six State Farm insurance agents in Florida to volunteer to participate in the program by “receiving these books in March, then donating them to their community by the end of April.”
“Agents are key to the success of this program,” the email read. “Nationwide, approximately 550 State Farm agents and employees will have the opportunity to donate this 3-book bundle to their local teacher, community center or library of their choice.”
“Along with donating the books, we would encourage the agent to highlight our commitment to diversity on their social media pages,” it added. “This is a fantastic way to give back and an easy project that will help support the LGBTQ+ community and to make the world around us better.”
In a statement to the Washington Examiner, which first reported the matter, State Farm defended the voluntary program, saying that it is “strictly voluntary.”
“We embrace diversity and inclusion because it‘s the right thing to do. We work with a variety of organizations and causes that express their own unique views, and support civil and open dialogue on challenging topics,” the company said.
State Farm later announced it no longer supports the book donation program.
The GenderCool Project describes itself as “a youth-led movement bringing positive change to the world.” The organization’s website highlights a group of young transgender or gender non-conforming “Champions,” who are “helping replace misinformed opinions with positive experiences meeting transgender and non-binary youth who are thriving.”
GenderCool lists a number of high profile companies other than State Farm as its partners and supporters, including Adobe, Dell, Oracle, Intel, HP, Bayer, Nike, Bank of America, Capital One, Indeed, and NBC Universal. The group says it engages with partners in “six powerful ways,” such as speaking events, mentorship programs, DEI/HR consulting, and advising for parents of transgender children.
Lorie Smith left the corporate world in 2012 to form her own website design firm, 303 Creative, which soon flourished. But in 2016 she was asked to create a design conveying a same-sex marriage message that flatly violated her deeply held Christian faith.
Smith declined to do so and when it became clear a Colorado public accommodation law would be used to force her to create messages that she and other Coloradans did not support, or face harsh penalties, she decided she had to challenge the statute.
So she turned to the federal court system to uphold her First Amendment freedoms and six years later the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in her case later this year.
Now Smith fears for her life as she awaits the slow-turning of the wheels of justice—thanks to continuous terrifying harassment, including death threats, from activists seeking to suppress her Christian beliefs.
“I have received phone calls, I’ve had mail show up at my home, I have had people wish me really vile things, things that should not be repeated, threats of bodily harm, some really vile things,” Smith said in response to a question from The Epoch Times.
Asked if she feared for her life Smith quickly responded saying, “Of course. When you hear the things that I’ve heard it is terrifying. It definitely makes your skin crawl and the hair on your back stand up.”
Smith added that “my clients have been harassed, and I love all of them dearly. They’ve received threats, as well as ultimatums, which has been difficult.”
She said the ultimatums came from “the same groups of people who have been so hateful toward me, but they took it a step further. They figured out my clients’ contact information and harassed them as well.”
Smith’s comments came on May 18 during a discussion with reporters at the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) headquarters in the nation’s capital. Smith is being represented by ADF, an Arizona-based public interest law firm that specializes in First Amendment and religious freedom cases. Her case is 303 Creative vs. Elenis.
Kristen Waggoner, ADF’s general counsel, told reporters that Smith had to appeal her case to the Supreme Court despite the multiple facts both sides of the litigation agreed on in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The 10th Circuit ruled against Smith and in favor of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission in a July 2021 decision in which the chief judge on the court dissented, calling the majority opinion “unprecedented” and “staggering” because the “Constitution protects Ms. Smith from the government telling her what to say …”
The chief judge also observed that, “Though I am loathe to reference [George] Orwell, the majority’s opinion endorses substantial government interference in matters of speech, religion, and conscience.
“Indeed, this case represents another chapter in the growing disconnect between the Constitution’s endorsement of pluralism of belief on the one hand and anti-discrimination laws’ restrictions of religious-based speech in the marketplace on the other.”
The judge was referring to Orwell’s famous quote that “if liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” He added that quote to his dissent text.
The first of the essential facts in the case that both sides accepted, Waggoner explained, was “that Lorie’s religious beliefs are central to her identity and that she strives to glorify God in everything she does. The second is that Lorie works with people from all walks of life, including those who identify as LGBT.”
Waggoner said, “the 10th Circuit also agreed that Lorie, like every other artist, serves everyone. Lorie chooses whether to create websites based on their content, not based on the person that requests that content, and the 10th Circuit agreed with that fact as well. Lorie’s websites are protected speech under the First Amendment, and the 10th Circuit agreed with that.”
Even so, she said, “the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals held in a 2-1 decision that the government can actually compel Lorie’s speech, even though it admitted that her decisions hinge on what the message is in the speech and not the person who requests it.”
Waggoner described the decision as “absolutely unprecedented,” and said “our government’s duty is to protect freedom, not to take it away. So, if the government has the power to force Lorie to speak a message, then it can force any one of us to speak a message.”
The Supreme Court accepted Smith’s case in February. Waggoner said that law enforcement authorities will be contacted if Smith continues to receive harassment and threats.
Waggoner said she will be filing briefs to the High Court next week, and Colorado will then have several months to reply. Amicus briefs supporting Smith are due June 2. Oral arguments could come as early as October.
REVIEW: ‘Take Two Aspirin and Call Me By My Pronouns’ by Stanley Goldfarb, M.D.
It is a popular sport among those on the progressive left to dismiss conservatives’ concerns about the spread of “woke” ideology (such as Critical Race Theory and “antiracism” training) in public education and corporate culture. Parents are scolded for suggesting that seeing the world through the “lens of CRT” or the factually challenged posturing of the 1619 Project might be harmful to their children’s education, and employees are chastised for questioning the effectiveness of new mandates on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. The implication is that only a racist would resist the new “antiracism.”
And yet, there is one arena in which woke thinking is not merely politically polarizing, but deadly. As Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, a nephrologist and associate dean for curriculum at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, writes in Take Two Aspirin and Call Me By My Pronouns, the “quiet woke revolution” that had been going on in medicine for some time “erupted in spring 2020 into a full-blown revolution”—one with ongoing negative consequences.
That year, in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the ensuing protests, and amid a global pandemic, doctors and medical students began going well beyond their remit as physicians to embrace the role of social justice activists. “Led by a cadre of woke administrators who embraced the tenets of critical race theory, the medical establishment was committing itself to a misguided focus on anti-racism and equity in all aspects of the health-care system,” Goldfarb writes.
Groups of physicians organized under names such as White Coats for Black Lives, and issued manifestos that were little more than crypto-Marxist argle bargle: A June 2021 statement outlined the group’s mission of “dismantling dominant, exploitative systems in the United States, which are largely reliant on anti-Black racism, colonialism, cisheteropatriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism,” for example. When “just what the doctor ordered” means a lecture on the harms of the cisheteropatriarchy, it is clear medicine has strayed far from its professional purpose.
Goldfarb makes short work of many of the faulty “antiracism” medical studies that take as their starting point the new popular assumption that medicine is racist. One frequently cited study about pain treatment in black and white patients claimed white doctors do not adequately treat black patients for pain; in fact, as Goldfarb describes, that study’s conclusions relied on other studies that were themselves seriously flawed and often not replicable, but which nevertheless received a great deal of attention, citation, and publication in prestigious medical journals eager to demonstrate their “antiracism” bona fides.
Likewise, studies of maternal and infant care of black women versus white women have yielded poorer outcomes for black women. If you ask a woke believer why this is the case, they will tell you something akin to the word salad offered by Vice President Kamala Harris: “Systemic racial inequities and implicit bias.” But, Goldfarb notes, to come to such alarmist conclusions one must ignore, as many of these studies do, many confounding factors such as the fact that black women “tend to have more underlying ‘comorbid’ conditions such as obesity, diabetes, and hypertension. They tend not to seek prenatal care as often as White women despite government programs to support such visits.” In fact, “Were obstetricians to take classes in unconscious bias every year of medical school, their attendance would not do a thing to alter the factors that contribute to the greater risk of childbirth in the Black community.”
Although “antiracism” studies are built on sand, they serve a professional and practical purpose for woke physicians by creating an easy villain. “The new religion of ‘wokism’ demanded the acceptance of a crippling mythology that racism—or even White supremacy—was the cause of the very real disparities in health-care outcomes for Black communities,” Goldfarb writes. Far easier to cite “racism” than to delve into the complicating factors that impact individual health.
Goldfarb is at his best when he tackles two disturbing trends in medicine: the dumbing down of standards for entrance into medical schools and the capitulation of medical school curricula to woke posturing at the expense of rigorous clinical training. He sees how even the American Medical Association has engaged in an institutional effort to appear more equitable by attacking the very idea of merit. The AMA’s recent master plan, for example, decries the “myth of meritocracy and other malignant narratives.”
Goldfarb notes the irony of claims that medical schools and hospitals are awash in white supremacy; these are the same institutions that for decades have pursued affirmative action policies that hold minority applicants to lower standards than their white peers. “The inarguable reality is that Blacks are preferentially admitted to medical school. Once admitted, they are virtually guaranteed to graduate. And once graduated, they are likely to find training programs more than eager to accept them in the name of diversity,” he writes. “Black students with a middling GPA in college and a 50ish percentile rank on the MCAT had a ninefold greater chance than White students. In other words, while only 20 percent of White applications with such mediocre grades and scores were admitted to medical school, 85 percent of comparable Black applicants were.”
When minority students fail to achieve at levels considered “equitable” to students of other races, the standards are simply changed or dropped to achieve the desired outcome. When black medical students failed to qualify for Alpha Omega Alpha (the medical school society equivalent of Phi Beta Kappa, which inducts entrants based on academic achievement), woke scholars like Dr. Catherine Lucey at UCSF attacked the standards, claiming the “systems we use [for student evaluation] fail to take into account the extra work minorities are doing.” What extra work is this? She cited, without evidence, “stressors” such as “low levels of racism that exist in our patients.” As Goldfarb puts it, “If extra work and stressors were the criteria, young women who give birth during medical school would be automatic inductees.”
Once accepted into medical school, students encounter far less rigorous training than in previous eras. Citing equity goals, many medical schools have moved from issuing grades to pass/fail assessments. A longtime educator himself, Goldfarb is concerned that “the science content of student education has been dramatically reduced. So has the range of clinical experience,” which has “diminished the practical value of medical education.” What are they learning instead? As Goldfarb describes, “Researchers at the University of Oregon, writing in the journal Academic Medicine in 2021, surveyed the curricula of 122 medical schools and found that more than half had a required course that covered elements of advocacy.” The goal of such classes is “clearly political, not medical.”
Woke medicine thus creates its own feedback loop:
Many young physicians and medical students see poverty, housing, police policies, incarceration rates, climate, and gun control as legitimate concerns of the medical profession. This expanded role for physicians is the rationale for the proposed transformation in medical education. Medical students are not being educated in the complexities of social policy. They are being indoctrinated. Once programmed, they can leverage the trust placed in physicians to advocate for a variety of progressive policies that have never worked anywhere.
Goldfarb is blunt in his assessment of the consequences—not the woke utopia imagined by its practitioners, but degraded health care for all: “By abandoning the traditional values such as treating all patients equally and recruiting the best and the brightest students, too many health educators have adopted a racialist agenda that will, if anything, aggravate health disparities and undermine the trust of patients of all races.”
Humanities majors might wince when Goldfarb says, “It is one thing for the Princeton classics department to abandon its Latin requirement for classics majors. It is quite another for Harvard Med to cut training time in biochemistry and pharmacology for future doctors. After all, no one dies if the classics major cannot conjugate morior.” But he is right to point out the real-world stakes. Commenting on the AMA’s “Organizational Strategic Plan to Embed Racial Justice and Advance Health Equity,” Goldfarb notes, correctly, and chillingly, “Unlike other social justice programs, this program is lethal. It will tangibly reduce the quality of medical care, and almost every American will suffer its side effects.”
Throughout the book, Goldfarb makes a convincing case that woke medicine is both a distraction and a danger. It’s a distraction because it exacts serious opportunity costs. Training doctors to be activists rather than to better treat individual patients does little to improve health care; physicians should be eliminating suffering, not engaging in social engineering. Likewise, it is dangerous because by lowering standards and rigor in the name of “equity,” it undermines the quality of medical care.
It also justifies racist practices in the name of righting past injustices. A badly designed study that purported to show that white cardiac patients received better care than black patients concluded by noting proudly that the hospital where the researchers worked now practiced “a preferential admission option for Black and Latinx heart failure patients to our specialty cardiology service.” As Goldfarb writes, “this is probably illegal but certainly immoral and an abrogation of the authors’ medical oath to care for the best interests of the patient.” Unfortunately, there are many more examples of physicians sacrificing patient care on the altar of political correctness.
Oddly for revolutionaries, today’s woke physicians and medical students are surprisingly sensitive. Harvard Medical School’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital recently caved to the complaints of woke medical students who said that the hospital’s main auditorium made them “uncomfortable” because it contained portraits of past leaders in the profession, who happened to be white men. “These giants of American medicine did not own slaves, treat Indians poorly, experiment on Black patients, or help the American military in any way,” Goldfarb notes. “Their sin was to be White, all of them, and, even worse, male. Their very existence was a microaggression.” For a profession that requires rigor, intelligence, and resilience, such coddling does not bode well.
And yet, Goldfarb is not despairing; rather, he calls for a “neo-traditional counterrevolution” in medicine that will revive higher standards for medical education and practice—standards uncorrupted by ideological crusades. He has spearheaded the formation of a nonprofit organization, Do No Harm, to eliminate identity politics in medicine.
It is a mark of his good sense that Goldfarb manages to maintain a wittily combative tone throughout his book—a commendable quality given the concerted efforts by some of his colleagues to cancel him. The book grew out of an opinion piece he published in the Wall Street Journal and for which he was pilloried by his woke colleagues and attacked on social media as an “asshole.” Goldfarb writes, “My goal is to inspire my fellow assholes to go full Howard Beale and shout from the rooftops, ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore.'”
After reading this book, every American who has ever set foot in a hospital or a doctor’s office should be mad as hell too.
Take Two Aspirin and Call Me By My Pronouns: Why Turning Doctors into Social Justice Warriors is Destroying American Medicine by Stanley Goldfarb, M.D. Bombardier Books, 216 pp., $17
Christine Rosen is senior writer at Commentary magazine and a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia.
Two sexually explicit novels may soon be removed from Virginia public school libraries thanks to a circuit court decision that called the books “obscene.”
Judge Pamela Baskervill ruled Wednesday that Gender Queer: A Memoir and A Court of Mist and Fury are too “obscene for unrestricted viewing by minors,” ABC 7 News reported. Virginia public schools may soon have to remove the novels and similarly graphic books from library shelves. The books’ publishers have three weeks to contest the ruling.
The Virginia Beach School Board voted prior to the decision to removeGender Queer from libraries, after a district working group deemed it “pervasively vulgar.” Written by “nonbinary” author Maia Kobabe, Gender Queer is a graphic novel focused on the author’s sexual experiences.
The book contains illustrations of a male character performing oral sex on a dildo affixed to Kobabe with a harness and recounts Kobabe’s trip to a pornography production company. A Court of Mist and Fury contains several graphic sexual scenes, the Washington Free Beacon found.
Virginia state delegate Tim Anderson (R.) in April petitioned the court to pull the books from schools on behalf of Tommy Altman, a congressional candidate running against Rep. Elaine Luria (D., Va.). Altman and Anderson on Wednesday filed a separate motion to the court, seeking to extend the ruling to all Virginia libraries and booksellers. If a judge rules in their favor, public libraries and bookstores will be barred from sharing or selling the books to minors without parental permission.
Critics say that banning books from school libraries violates the First Amendment. But Anderson insists the court order doesn’t explicitly ban the books but helps parents control their children’s access to obscene content, according to ABC 7.
This is not the first time Gender Queer has caused a dustup in Virginia schools. Fairfax County Public Schools in October pulled the book from libraries but reversed its decision a month later. Loudoun County Public Schools removed Gender Queer from libraries after determining the book “ran counter to what is appropriate in school.”
Accused of racism by an incoming McKinsey consultant, bar bent over backwards to appease Brown’s diversity commissars
Students at Brown University extracted an apology from a blue-collar bar after a soon-to-be McKinsey consultant accused its employees of racism, prompting a student boycott and a shakedown from the school’s diversity office.
The Graduate Center Bar apologized on April 27 for removing three black students who were roughhousing in line, after one of the students, Okezie Okoro, confronted the bouncer who told them to knock it off. The confrontation took place on April 7 and occurred after the bouncer let them inside. When Okoro gave the bouncer grief for reprimanding his friends, an argument ensued, culminating in the students’ ejection from the bar.
A week later, Okoro posted on social media a 2,000-word denunciation of the bar, replete with a “content warning” and a list of demands. The post accused the bouncer of racism and attacked the bar’s manager, Susan Yund, for dismissing that accusation.
“When we students voice concerns that someone has been harmed,” Okoro wrote, “we expect at the very least a response that attempts to deepen understanding.”
The bar capitulated, sending Okoro a fawning apology that outlined the steps it was taking “to be diverse, queer, and safe for all.”
“We should have had policies in place that would have made you feel safer and heard when you took issue with the situation,” the bar told Okoro. “We should have engaged with you more respectfully, patiently, and compassionately when you disagreed with us.”
Okoro, a senior at Brown University and the president of the school’s Black Consulting Initiative, will be working as a McKinsey analyst upon graduation, according to his LinkedIn profile. Starting salaries at the prestigious consultancy typically top $100,000.
The apology, which Okoro posted on Instagram, promised “de-escalation training” and the “addition of bar cameras,” as well as updates to the bar’s harassment policies. Those commitments came six months after the bar reopened with reduced capacity limits and days after the bar’s managers met with Okoro and Brown vice president for institutional equity and diversity Sylvia Carey-Butler, according to the Brown Daily Herald.
Housed in the basement of an undergraduate dormitory, the bar is run by blue-collar locals and depends on the university for survival. It requested the sit-down amid a student boycott organized by Okoro, who told the Daily Herald he hoped his campaign would be “restorative.”
Okoro, Carey-Butler, and the Graduate Center Bar did not respond to requests for comment.
The episode is the latest example of how privileged students weaponize race against less privileged service workers, often with the backing of college administrators. At Smith College, a janitor was placed on leave after he called security on a black student eating lunch in a closed dorm. At Oberlin College, students and faculty protested a local bakery for calling the police on a black shoplifter who’d assaulted a clerk. The protests led to Oberlin suspending its purchasing agreement with the bakery—and to a lawsuit that forced the college to pay $11 million in damages.
That sort of riposte seems unlikely for the Graduate Center Bar, which is still reeling from the pandemic. Because the bar rents space from the university, it is required to comply with Brown’s COVID restrictions, some of the strictest in the Ivy League. The university closed the bar in March 2020 and did not let it reopen until November 2021, by which point vaccines had been available for almost a year. Several bartenders filed for unemployment while the bar was closed, the Daily Heraldreported.
It is unclear how rowdy Okoro was being in line: Though the future McKinsey analyst claims he was “play-fighting (without physical contact),” Yund said the antics went beyond “merely tapping each other on the shoulder.”
“In the narrow hallway that is the GCB’s entrance it can be dangerous if people are moving their arms or elbows around unexpectedly,” she emailed Okoro after the incident. “We know this from experience.”
That didn’t satisfy Okoro, who ridiculed Yund’s email in his post. The bouncer’s reaction, he said, “was a manifestation of respectability politics and shows how black people often have to withhold from expression in order to comfort and conform.”
It could also show that the bar takes safety seriously. Rhode Island has one of the strictest fire codes in the nation, the legacy of a nightclub fire that killed 100 people and injured 230 more. Since the bar is tucked away in a basement, alums told the Washington Free Beacon, it enforces strict capacity limits and generally has a long line, which requires careful crowd control in the cramped corridors of the dorm. Pictures of the bar posted on Brown’s website confirm the tight confines.
The boycott began on April 13 and lasted a week and half. Okoro’s Instagram post announcing it was shared over 700 times, he told the Daily Herald, suggesting a number of students participated in the boycott.
But on other social media platforms, Okoro’s demands met with derision—especially his call for the “indefinite suspension of the door person” who told him to cut it out.
“Imagine very reasonably being kicked from a bar bc you’re dicking around and then being an ass about it…then using your bruised ego to try to get a working class Brown employee fired,” one user posted on Dear Blueno, an anonymous message board for Brown students. “You literally are pissed that you got corrected in public and now you wanna fuck up this guy’s life over it?”
“Why argue with the bouncer after getting let in?” another user asked. “That would get you thrown out of most bars. Either the kid is an idiot, or he caused a scene because he wants to be the center of attention.”
Okoro nonetheless demanded an “apology to the affected students,” which he described as “an integral step to rectifying the harm committed.” That harm, Okoro said, was nothing short of existential.
“As a fourth-year black student, with significant academic and extracurricular engagement at Brown, it is discouraging to experience this in a Brown University space,” Okoro wrote. “My investment in and experience at the school can go unrecognized and erased, revealing the only thing that matters: my blackness.”
Parkland student-turned-liberal activist in interview with Chinese propaganda paper slams US as ‘white supremacist country’
A survivor of the 2018 Parkland, Fla., high school shooting who has since become a liberal activist labeled the United States a “white supremacist country” during an interview with a Chinese propaganda outlet.
“This is a white supremacist country,” Ryan Deitsch told the Global Times, which is operated by the Chinese Communist Party. “Our constitution was written by slave owners and white supremacists. We continue to uphold these doctrines.”
“This is a white supremacist country. Our constitution was written by slave owners and white supremacists. We continue to uphold these doctrines.” @Ryan_Deitsch, a survivor of Parkland shooting massacre, told @WenwenWang1127 what he thought of the Buffalo attack in #ITalk show. pic.twitter.com/qmv9aWpdTj
After the shooting, Deitsch made multiple media appearances, including a confrontation with Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) at a 2018 CNN town hall, and has since became a left-wing activist. He says he was a delegate on the Democratic National Committee’s platform committee, appointed by socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.). His LinkedIn profile says his work on the committee was focused on “clarifying language around sex worker protections.”
China for years has been carrying out a genocide against the ethnic Uyghur minority. In December, Congress passed a bill sanctioning China for its human rights abuses and banning imports from Xinjiang, where a large Uyghur population lives and works.
Left-wing pundits and Democratic politicians have frequently accused their opponents of “white supremacy.” In August, a Minnesota Democratic official celebrated the rioters who burned down the Minneapolis Police Department’s Third Precinct during the summer of 2020, saying that “fetishizing decorum … is a hallmark of white supremacy.” Activists have similarly overwritten traditional educational curricula and abolished admissions tests as vestiges of “white supremacy.”
While Deitsch talked about the Saturday shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, in which an 18-year-old white nationalist gunman on Saturday shot and killed 10 black people, he did not mention the separate racially motivated shooting that occurred the next day. A gunman on Sunday shot up a California church filled with Taiwanese congregants. The local sheriff’s office reported the shooter was a Chinese immigrant motivated by his hate for the Taiwanese.
A Montana high school health class received a questionnaire that seemingly called heterosexual people rapists and child molesters, according to a report from a local NBC affiliate.
NBC Montana reported that a concerned parent reached out when her freshman “felt uncomfortable” after receiving a questionnaire in health class. The parent alleged that the assignment was handed out at the end of class “with no discussion.”
The questionnaire asked a litany of questions about why “heterosexuals” or “straights” are responsible for rape and child molestation. One question insinuated that “straights” struggle to stay in marriages.
“When the handout was brought to the District’s attention, there was an immediate investigation and the handout was removed. MCPS has a ‘challenged materials’ procedure that anyone can access,” the district said. “Generally, the challenged materials procedure is used when there is a challenge of curriculum material used in our classrooms. However, the handout in this particular incident was not part of the curriculum and should not have been used, as it is not part of our approved instructional materials for this unit.”
The worksheet was handed out approximately one month after Sentinel High School’s principal was placed on administrative leave for facing criminal charges.
Parents Defending Education, a nationwide concerned parents organization, told the Daily Caller that examples like this explain the perceived lack of trust between parents and the education system.
“It’s little wonder parents across the country are clamoring for transparency,” Nicki Neily, co-founder and president of Parents Defending Education said. “Trust between families and the education [system] has been destroyed, and leaked lessons like this illustrate precisely why.”
Missoula County Public Schools did not respond to the Daily Caller’s request for comment.
In May, a group called Accountable Tech, which calls itself a “small nonprofit taking on Big Tech companies,” organized a corporate boycott to protest Elon Musk’s bid to buy Twitter. In the midwest, a group called Opportunity Wisconsin, which bills itself as a “coalition of Wisconsin residents,” ran a deluge of TV ads slamming Republican senator Ron Johnson for his tax policies. And in Arizona, an organization of “grassroots racial justice” activists called Just Democracy released a video blasting Democratic senator Kyrsten Sinema for failing to support the Biden administration’s legislative agenda.
None of these groups actually exist. They are all registered trade names for the North Fund, a shape-shifting nonprofit group that uses aliases to push an array of left-wing causes from a shell office in Washington, D.C., according to corporate records.
Political watchdogs say the fund, which isn’t required to disclose the donors behind its $66 million budget, is gearing up to be one of the most consequential dark-money players of the midterm elections. And while “astroturf” groups are nothing new in politics, critics say the North Fund is part of a new breed—moving away from specific policy advocacy and delving into electoral politics.
“North Fund has said screw it,” said Hayden Ludwig, a senior investigator with the Capital Research Center. “They’ve just decided to be as partisan as they can.”
“Their money has been pretty much exclusively focused on Senate races, on ballot initiatives, and a few things kind of related to that,” Ludwig added. “The general theme there is cementing permanent Democratic majorities in Congress.”
The North Fund, which was founded in 2018, is helmed by a handful of Democratic operatives, including former Clinton aide Jim Gerstein. It operates under at least eight trade names, according to D.C. corporate records, including “51 for 51,” a group pushing for statehood for the heavily Democratic District of Columbia, and the “Voting Rights Lab Action,” which advocates for voting policy reforms favorable to Democrats.
Under the guise of “Opportunity Wisconsin,” the group has poured $4 million into negative TV advertising against Johnson, making it one of the top-spending outside groups in the state. Through another alias, the “Democracy Docket Action Fund,” the nonprofit has helped finance state-level redistricting lawsuits that favor Democrats across the country. And the “Accountable Tech” boycott campaign, which seeks to pressure Twitter to restrict speech from conservative outlets and Republican politicians, has received international news coverage.
“From trying to make D.C. a state to funding [Democratic operative] Marc Elias’s politicized lawsuits, North Fund’s presence is often felt but their very existence is virtually unknown,” Caitlin Sutherland, the executive director of the Americans for Public Trust watchdog group, told the Washington Free Beacon. “If untraceable money is flooding the latest policy or legislative fight under the guise of grassroots activism, chances are, North Fund is behind it.”
Critics say organizations like the North Fund can also have an outsized impact on the private sector, because corporations have a hard time discerning its work from bona fide grassroots groups.
“Corporations rarely understand that a vast majority of these boycott campaigns are organized and run by hyper-partisan political hacks instead of thoughtful and experienced policy experts,” one tech industry insider familiar with these boycott campaigns told the Free Beacon. “They disguise themselves in idealistic sounding group names while structuring their organizations in such a way that hides the true motivations and identity of their large donors.”
The North Fund received $66 million in 2020, according to its public tax disclosures, nearly all of it from large contributors. Over 93 percent came from donors giving over $1 million.
While the North Fund doesn’t disclose the names of its contributors, it is required to report the donation amounts. Americans for Public Trust was able to trace some of the funding using grant data from other nonprofits.
Sutherland found that the North Fund received $19.3 million from the Sixteen Thirty Fund and over $11 million from the New Venture Fund, two organizations that share an address in D.C. Similar to the North Fund, the groups operate under at least 50 trade names—including “Fix Our Senate,” “Floridians for a Fair Shake,” and the “Voter Engagement Fund.”
However, the Sixteen Thirty Fund and the New Venture Fund don’t disclose their donors either, leading to a dead end in the money trail.
The North Fund declined to comment on its funding relationships or its use of trade names. The group told the Free Beacon that it “follows all disclosure requirements related to the disclosure of individual donors and grantees.”
“The North Fund is a nonpartisan social impact organization that partners with community leaders and organizers to help make our society a more just, fair, and equitable place to live, work, and raise families,” said the North Fund in an emailed statement. “As a fiscal sponsor, the North Fund provides operational and administrative support to projects, including legal and compliance, HR, accounting and payroll, and grantmaking support.”
Despite its large budget and impact, the North Fund has almost no physical footprint. When the Free Beacon visited its office in downtown D.C.—a co-working rental space managed by the company Carr Workplaces—the front desk manager said the North Fund uses the address but doesn’t maintain a presence there. “I’m not sure where they’re actually located,” he said.
The North Fund is managed by a Democratic consulting firm called Arabella Advisors, which also keeps the copies of the fund’s public financial documents, according to the fund’s tax disclosure records. Nonprofit groups are required to provide physical copies of these records to members of the public who request them in person, a spokesperson for the IRS told the Free Beacon.
But at Arabella’s office building in D.C., the lobby receptionists told the Free Beacon they were under strict orders from the firm to turn away all outside visitors.
When the Free Beacon stopped by the listed D.C. address for the Sixteen Thirty Fund and the New Venture Fund—the North Fund’s primary donors—their cavernous, full-floor office suite was deserted.
The groups had recently moved out, leaving just a couple of office chairs, the logo for Arabella Advisors emblazoned on the floors, and a piece of paper taped to a radiator that read, “Loose Lips Sink Ships.”
Update 10:55 a.m.: This piece has been updated to include comment from the North Fund.
Former First Lady Melania Trump gave her first interview since leaving the White House, providing a hint that her husband may be seeking another term in office and saying “it’s sad to see” the state of the country under the current administration.
“I think we achieved a lot in four years of the Trump administration,” Melania told Fox News in a Sunday interview, adding that “never say never” when asked about whether she could be again living inside the White House.
“I like Washington, D.C. I know it operates completely different than any other city, but I really like it there. And I enjoyed living in the White House. To be first lady of the United States was my greatest honor. I think we achieved a lot in the four years of Trump administration. I enjoyed taking care of the White House. It was my home for a while. I understood it is people’s house. And it was, it was a privilege to live there,” she continued to say.
When asked by Fox host Pete Hegseth about former first ladies Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton appearing on the cover of Vogue, Melania, a former model, criticized the magazine. Melania appeared on the cover of Vogue in 2005 when she was photographed alongside former President Donald Trump in her wedding dress.
“They’re biased and they have likes and dislikes, and it’s so obvious. And I think American people and everyone sees it. It was their decision, and I have much more important things to do—and I did in the White House—than being on the cover of Vogue,” Melania told the broadcaster.
The former first lady, a native of Slovenia, weighed in on the state of the United States under the Biden administration.
“I think it’s sad to see what’s going on, if you really look deeply into it,” Melania said, adding: “I think a lot of people are struggling and suffering and what is going on around the world as well. So it’s very sad to see and I hope it changes fast,” Melania added.
Donald Trump has not definitively said whether he will run for reelection, although he has suggested in interviews that he might.
Last month, Trump, 75, told the Washington Post that his health could play a role in whether he decides to run or not. In 2024, Trump will turn 78, and should he run—and win—the presidency, he’ll be 82 when he departs. President Joe Biden is slated to turn 80 this November.
“You always have to talk about health. You look like you’re in good health, but tomorrow, you get a letter from a doctor saying come see me again,” he told the outlet in April. ‘That’s not good when they use the word ‘again,’” Trump added, saying he is currently in good health.
A former university professor who calls for less social stigma on pedophilia is set to return to academia, landing a new job at a research center dedicated to preventing child sexual abuse.
The Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sex Abuse at Johns Hopkins University, Maryland, announced Thursday that Allyn Walker will join as a postdoctoral fellow, starting on May 25.
“We are excited to share that Allyn Walker, PhD, will be joining the Moore Center as a postdoctoral fellow on May 25,” said the Moore Center, which describes itself as working to “change the way the world thinks about child sexual abuse, from inevitable to preventable.”
Walker, who identifies as nonbinary and uses pronouns they/them, previously worked as an assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice at Old Dominion University, Virginia. He has advocated to lessen the social stigma against pedophilia, and that pedophiles be instead referred to with the euphemistic term “minor attracted persons,” or MAPs.
In June 2021, Walker published a book that “challenges widespread assumptions” about those he called “non-offending MAPs.” He discussed the book months later in an interview, during which he argued that it wasn’t necessarily immoral for adults to be sexually attracted to children.
“I want to be extremely clear that child sexual abuse is never ever okay. But having an attraction to minors as long as it isn’t acted on, doesn’t mean that the person who has those attractions is doing something wrong,” he said in the November 2021 interview with the Prostasia Foundation, a San Francisco-based child protection organization.
“I think we have a tendency to want to categorize people with these attractions as evil or morally corrupt. But when we’re talking about non-offending MAPS, these are people who have an attraction that they didn’t ask for,” he told Prostasia.
The interview triggered a social media outrage, with many calling on Old Dominion to fire Walker. After initially backing Walker in the controversy, the university placed him on leave until he agreed to resign.
In the wake of a backlash similar to that faced by Old Dominion, Moore Center tried to explain the decision to hire Walker.
“Allyn Walker is a leader in the field of perpetration prevention research, which is essential for developing a comprehensive public health approach to addressing child sexual abuse and effective prevention programs,” the center wrote Friday on Twitter. “We are delighted to have Allyn Walker join our team.”
The center wrote in a separate post that Walker will “support multiple, large-scale, ongoing research projects and help identify new projects.”
“Allyn Walker’s expertise and qualitative research methodology will enhance and advance the work of the Moore Center. We are excited to have them join our team,” the center concluded.
The Epoch Times reached out to Johns Hopkins for comments and was directed to the statement released by the Moore Center.
During event with teachers’ union leaders, Jahana Hayes heaps praise on House speaker
Swing-district Democrat Jahana Hayes pledged to oppose Nancy Pelosi for House speaker in 2018. Now, the Connecticut congresswoman is one of Pelosi’s biggest supporters.
During a May 5 virtual event with top teachers’ union leaders, Hayes heaped praise on Pelosi, saying she feels “incredibly blessed” and “incredibly privileged” to serve under the California Democrat. “I’m just so humbled to be able to say that I served in the Congress with Nancy Pelosi,” Hayes added.
Hayes’s gushing admiration for Pelosi is a significant shift from the Democrat’s rhetoric during her first congressional run in 2018. Hayes explicitly promised she wouldn’t back Pelosi for House speaker, arguing that Democrats needed a “generational shift in leadership.” But Hayes quickly reneged on that pledge and falsely said a vote against Pelosi would be “a vote for the Republicans.”
The virtual event also saw Hayes express her support for President Joe Biden, who she said “listens” and “wants to be helpful.” Hayes’s decision to tether herself to Biden may backfire as she navigates a difficult reelection bid in Connecticut’s Fifth Congressional District. Biden’s political standing in the state has rapidly declined since he won it by a whopping 20 points in 2020. According to a May Civiqs poll, just 38 percent of registered Connecticut voters approve of the president, while 50 percent disapprove.
In addition to Pelosi, Hayes appeared at the virtual event alongside American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten and National Education Association president Becky Pringle. That connection could also provoke political backlash—Connecticut teachers’ union leaders, including the state’s AFT president, in January vocally opposed a return to in-person learning, instead arguing in favor of a remote option due to safety concerns. Some unionized teachers responded by wearing black to school as a form of protest.
Hayes joined Congress in 2019, replacing outgoing Democratic incumbent Elizabeth Esty. While Hayes’s district is the least liberal in Connecticut, she has deep ties to far-left “Squad” members Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.). In February 2019, the trio appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone, which also featured Pelosi.
Hayes’s campaign did not immediately return a request for comment.
A Colorado mother was cut off at her local school board meeting after trying to read out a sexually explicit passage from a book she said was available to children in the school district.
The mother, identifying herself as D. Barnes, spoke at a March 16 school board meeting for Adams 12 Five Star Schools, which serves Denver’s northeastern outskirts. She told board members that she was “very concerned” about the material that children have access to through their schooling.
“I do not favor book banning,” she said to the audience, many of whom had spoken before her either in support or opposition to the district’s policy regarding “gender non-conforming” and transgender students. “But I do want to tell you that pornography does not belong in our schools.”
Barnes specifically took issue with two books: “Gender Queer,” a graphic novel by Maia Kobabe, and “Lawn Boy,” a young adult novel by Jonathan Evison. She said that young children have access to these titles “via online resources that Adams 12 made possible.”
“Alison Bechdel writes ‘Fun Home’ about discovering masturbation soon after her first period,” Barnes began reading from “Gender Queer.”
“I discovered around the same age followed by the further realization that my ability to become aroused was governed by a strict law of diminishing returns, an elaborate fantasy based on Plato’s Symposium. The more I had to interact with my genitals, the less likely I was to reach a point of satisfaction. The best fantasy was one that did not require any physical touch at all.”
She then continued to read a section detailing the use of a new sex toy and various associated quotes.
It was at this point that the board decided Barnes was “out of order” and demanded she stop reading. “This is your first warning,” a board member said.
“This is a book that is accessible in Adams 12,” the mother protested as that board member asked her to refrain from reading further. “This is what you allow in our schools. This is what you allow for our kids to have access to. This is pornography and this is grooming for pedophilia.”
Another board member suggested restoring Barnes’s time so long as she agreed to keep the content “appropriate for K-12.” The apparent irony prompted several attendees in the audience to speak out in frustration.
“But it’s in the library. You made it appropriate,” a man yelled.
Barnes moved on to describe her feelings when she discovered “Lawn Boy” was available to high school students in the district.
“I was livid, I was angry, I was hurt that this was accessible to our children,” she said, arguing that the book should be treated the same way as “Playboy” or “Penthouse,” which don’t deserve a place in schools in the first place, she added.
The video of the four-hour meeting has been on the Adams 12’s YouTube since March, but has recently gone viral on social media after a two-minute clip of the exchange was shared by popular Twitter account LibsofTikTok.
In a statement regarding Barnes’s comments, Adams 12 said the district has just one copy of “Lawn Boy.”
“Members of the community have the opportunity to challenge school library materials currently held in district-managed schools,” the district stated. “At the current time, one copy of ‘Lawn Boy’ is held at one of our high school libraries and ‘Gender Queer’ is not held in any of the school libraries of district-managed schools.”
If Erin Lee had known what her 12-year-old daughter would be exposed to during an afterschool “art club” last May, she would have never allowed her to go.
It began innocently enough. Lee received a text from her daughter asking if she could stay late for an “art club” at Wellington Middle School near Fort Collins, Colorado.
What happened next, though, would change their lives forever.
The “art club” was actually a meeting of the school’s Genders & Sexualities Alliance (GSA) club, a group dedicated to supporting homosexuality, transgenderism, and other nontraditional ideas about gender and sexuality.
When the leader told Amanda (name changed to protect the minor) she must be “queer” if she didn’t feel sexually attracted to anybody, and that she must be “transgender” if she didn’t feel fully comfortable in her own body, the shy little girl suspected something wasn’t right.
According to Amanda, that same leader told her not to tell her parents about what would be discussed that day.
The woman in charge, Kimberly Chambers, who works as a “health equity initiatives coordinator” for Larimer County and director of the pro-LGBT organization SPLASH Youth of Northern Colorado, also handed out her personal contact information to the children and urged them to contact her anytime.
Chambers’ organization has boasted of teaching children ages 12 to 16 about “polyamory”—relationships with multiple sexual partners simultaneously—and other controversial ideas.
During the afterschool GSA club, according to Amanda, Chambers explained to the children that their family homes may not be a “safe space,” but that there were “resources” available. She also handed out transgender flags and stickers that Amanda understood were supposed to represent the children in the club.
As soon as Lee picked up her daughter at school, it was clear that something was “off,” the mother told The Epoch Times in a series of interviews about the incident.
Amanda, looking confused, showed her mother the transgender paraphernalia she had received from Chambers. The transgender flag represented her, Amanda told her mom.
“My heart started racing and my mind blacked out,” Lee recounted. “I was in so much shock that I struggled to get out any words.”
Even though the GSA leader at school had told Amanda it was OK to lie to her parents, Amanda knew better. Over the days that followed, she told her parents everything, Lee said.
Amanda’s parents could hardly believe what they were hearing. Lee, who has described herself as an “ally of the LGBTQ community” and said she has a history of voting “pretty progressively on social issues,” was appalled.
But that would be just the beginning of an ordeal that continues to haunt the family.
Erin Lee’s 13-year-old daughter, who wished to remain anonymous, holds an assignment that was handed out at an art club at her school in Wellington, Colo. (Michael Ciaglo for The Epoch Times)
The Fallout
Amanda never went back to the school after that. Instead, her parents put her in a local Christian school, even though it meant Lee would have to work nights to afford it. But as Lee and her husband saw it, there was no other choice.
Despite being pulled out of Wellington Middle School, the family’s difficulties grew.
After the lesson, Amanda began to wonder whether she might truly be queer and transgender. Her mental state began to rapidly deteriorate, her mother said.
Multiple family members confirmed to The Epoch Times that prior to what Lee describes as the “grooming” of her daughter at school, Amanda never showed any signs of “gender dysphoria,” the term used by psychiatrists to describe discomfort with one’s biological sex.
Afterward, though, it was hard for the girl to shake the idea.
Lee and her husband, who was outraged by the ordeal, struggled for months with how to talk to their daughter about what had happened.
“We didn’t want to say something that would push her further into this dark hole or further into this transgender label,” Lee said. “And we did exactly what the trusted adults who indoctrinated her told her we would do. We played right into their narrative.”
Weeks after the incident, as her mental state got worse, the parents decided to take Amanda to a therapist. The therapist also ended up being “queer,” and sought to affirm the young girl’s confusion about her gender.
By December, between the COVID isolation and the questions surrounding her gender, Amanda’s mental state was spiraling downward, Lee said.
The pediatrician immediately prescribed powerful psychotropic drugs for depression—medications that she has since been weaned from—in an attempt to deal with the crisis.
“I don’t know if that fear will ever go away,” Lee said about her own concerns. “I don’t expect to ever stop being struck with sadness about what happened.”
Erin Lee and her husband Jonathan Lee pose for a portrait with their 13-year-old daughter, who wished to remain anonymous, at their home in Wellington, Colo., on May 7, 2022. (Michael Ciaglo for The Epoch Times)
Fighting Back
The more she thought about the whole ordeal, the more Lee realized she had to do something.
First, she contacted Chambers, the woman who Lee says “groomed” her daughter and who also sometimes works as a substitute teacher for the district. “Her response was alarming,” Lee said. “It was delusional. She doubled down on her actions.”
Next she contacted the principal, who seemed empathetic but confirmed that secret GSA meetings with children were an intentional part of creating a “safe space” at school.
There are more than two dozen self-proclaimed LGBTQ children in the small middle school, according to social media posts by SPLASH. And the district is determined that they be “affirmed” without parental involvement, Lee said.
After all that, Lee spoke out at a school board meeting and contacted all its members by email. None responded. When she was finally able to sit down with two of them, they both “supported everything that transpired and refused to address any of my concerns.”
Finally, exasperated and realizing her first call would have been to the police if this had occurred on a playground or any other setting, Lee contacted the sheriff’s office.
While law enforcement was deeply sympathetic to her plight, and urged her to speak out loudly, there was nothing they could do from a legal perspective, Lee said.
District officials, meanwhile, saw nothing wrong with what had occurred, Lee said. Indeed, some expressed shock that a parent would be upset over the incident.
As Lee fought back, school officials were working on their next move.
Among other tactics, documents and communications obtained by The Epoch Times revealed a discussion about the possibility of reporting the parents to child-welfare authorities.
Wellington Middle School sits under stormy skies in Wellington, Colo., on May 7, 2022. (Michael Ciaglo for The Epoch Times)
When Chambers was informed by the art teacher that Amanda’s parents had not been sending her to school since the incident, Chambers wrote back urging her to consider filing a report and have child-protection officials visit the home.
“If that persists, you’ll want to talk to admin about doing a well-child check or whatever is within the policies of the school,” Chambers wrote, describing upset parents as “barriers” and citing an “extreme case” in which a family did not allow their transgender child to leave the home unsupervised.
Lee was flabbergasted after receiving the documents.
“I knew this woman was evil, but I didn’t see this coming,” she said. “This teacher and Kimberly [Chambers] forced us to pull our child out of school by creating an unsafe environment, then discussed sending CPS into our home because we pulled her out, at our most vulnerable moment as a family—that they caused.”
“If my child had indicated that we were not affirming her pronouns and trans identity, I believe the authorities would’ve taken our child away,” Lee added. “And everyone involved knew this.”
District and LGBT Activists Respond
The Epoch Times reached out to Chambers for comment, asking whether she considered non-affirmation of a child’s gender ideas to be abuse and seeking confirmation about the story details.
“Given the private nature of this specific youth and family’s needs, I’d like to share with you a couple of Colorado and National resources around gender identity to help inform your article rather than provide any comment,” she said before providing a number of links on transgenderism and legal issues.
Wellington Middle School referred inquiries to the district. A message left on the principal’s phone was not immediately returned.
Poudre School District Executive Director of Communications Madeline Noblett told The Epoch Times that the district couldn’t comment on “specific student matters.”
When asked about policies on getting child protection services involved in cases such as Amanda’s, Noblett noted that all district staff are “mandated reporters” under Colorado law. That means they are required to report suspected child abuse.
Noblett didn’t respond to follow-up questions about district policy on whether parents’ refusal to support their children transitioning to a new gender constitutes abuse.
“It is the role of the Department of Human Services to investigate the suspected/reported case; to determine whether the child is safe; to determine if abuse occurred; and to provide appropriate services to the family,” she said.
However, the district aims to “create and uphold equitable, inclusive, and rigorous educational opportunities, outcomes, and experiences for all students,” she said.
High School students sit through class in Sidney, Ohio, on Oct. 31, 2019. (MEGAN JELINGER/AFP via Getty Images)
“As a district, we are committed to making our schools safe spaces in which all students can learn,” Noblett said, adding that the district has “a LGBTQIA+ coordinator who works to advance the resources, support, inclusion, and advocacy of LGBTQIA+ students, staff, and families.”
“Gay Straight Alliances were established as safe spaces for members of the LGBTQIA+ community, allies, and any individual to come together with the goals of ensuring inclusivity, safety, and support,” Noblett said.
When asked how GSA adult leaders were trained, the communications director said there were no training requirements to lead any club in the district. However, GSA leaders could use resources from the GSA network and from One Colorado, the network’s state affiliate.
Gillian Ford of One Colorado didn’t specifically address questions from The Epoch Times about how GSA adult leaders are trained, whether it’s standard practice to tell children not to talk to their parents about these issues, or whether the escalating parental outrage was appropriate.
“Schools are often places where LGBTQ+ young people don’t feel safe or included,” said Ford, whose pronouns are listed as “she, her, hers” in her email signature.
“Since 2011, One Colorado has worked with both statewide education associations, as well as local educators, parents, and students to create and sustain the Colorado Gender and Sexuality Alliance (GSA) Network to support and empower LGBTQ+ young people and their allies against the bullying, harassment, homophobia, and transphobia in their schools.”
National and State Trends
What happened to the Lee family in Northern Colorado is hardly an isolated incident, experts told The Epoch Times.
“At first, we wanted to believe it was an isolated incident,” Lee said. “We didn’t want to believe that there could be such evil in our public school system, in our local government, in our community.”
Erin Lee (L) poses for a portrait with her 13-year-old daughter, who wished to remain anonymous, at their home in Wellington, Colo., on May 7, 2022. (Michael Ciaglo for The Epoch Times)
What happened to Lee’s family is part of an accelerating national trend. Numerous European nations are witnessing similar phenomena.
The Epoch Times spoke with other families across the nation who had similar experiences, but almost none were willing to go on record due to fears of retaliation by government officials and activists.
While the American College of Pediatricians describes teaching children that it’s normal or healthy to impersonate the opposite sex as “child abuse,” larger and more established associations have taken a different approach.
A new “puberty guide” for children between 9 and 12 published by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) claims that boys can menstruate and that girls can experience erections.
“Most babies who are born with a penis grow up feeling like a boy on the inside too. That’s called being cisgender (cis- means ‘same’),” the guide states. “But there are some babies born with a penis who grow up feeling like a girl on the inside. That’s called being transgender (trans- means ‘cross’ or ‘opposite’).”
Other surveys show even higher numbers. One from UCLA found over one-fourth of California teens were viewed by peers as “gender non-conforming.”
Those numbers are rising rapidly.
Pam Benigno, director of the Education Policy Center at Colorado’s free-market think tank the Independence Institute. (Courtesy of Pam Benigno)
Pam Benigno, director of the Education Policy Center at Colorado’s free-market think tank the Independence Institute, told The Epoch Times that she has heard numerous “disturbing stories” from parents across the state about their children coming home from school confused about their gender.
“I spoke with a dad who told me that without his knowledge, staff from his daughter’s middle school drafted a transition plan for his daughter to become a male,” Benigno said. “This is not uncommon. In fact, teachers have been ordered not to tell parents if students take on a new identity while at school.”
Districts across the state, under the guise of being “inclusive,” are “pushing a radical-left agenda on children” and have even “adopted the non-scientific theory that gender identity is fluid,” she said.
This includes hiring “queer” organizations to smash traditional notions of normalcy in the minds of students, she added.
A recently published paper by The Independence Institute aims at helping parents ensure transparency in school curricula. But parents must be vigilant and protect their children from “devastating emotional and sometimes physical harm,” Benigno said.
Conservative states are no exception to the trend. In Utah, state controlled-substance data revealed a 10,000 percent increase between 2015 and 2020 in the number of minor girls undergoing medical transitions.
In Ludlow, Massachusetts, a major lawsuit by parents against the school district is alleging that education officials encouraged children to experiment with alternate gender identities and hide it from their parents.
Andrew Beckwith, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute. (Courtesy of Andrew Beckwith)
Andrew Beckwith, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute who is involved in the case, is dealing with a surge in such cases in his state.
“We see the same aggressive attack on the integrity of the parent-child relationship here in Massachusetts,” he told The Epoch Times when asked about parallels between Lee’s story and what’s taking place there.
“Many of the LGBTQ activists want to brand traditional sexual morality as ‘child abuse,’ and their accomplices in child services terrorize families who won’t just go along with this agenda,” he said, calling these sorts of policies an “appalling and dangerous violation of the rights of parents.”
“What is happening in Ludlow is part of a larger national agenda to deliberately circumvent the authority of parents over the mental health and religious beliefs of their children,” Beckwith said. “School officials around the country are secretly affirming, or even promoting, discordant gender identities in young children.”
The Biden administration has started threatening legal action against local communities, schools, states, and other institutions that don’t submit to the transgender agenda.
Warning to Parents
As a result of the ordeal, Lee has lost all trust in the media, the government, the medical profession, and the public school system.
“Now I don’t trust a single person in the public school system,” she told The Epoch Times. “Not a single one.”
Lee said she has been in contact with numerous attorneys about the case as she considers her legal options. She is still seeking counsel.
Today, Amanda is doing much better, her parents say.
But in an effort to help protect other families from similar situations, the family has decided to continue sounding the alarm while encouraging parents to become more aware and get more involved.
Among other suggestions, Lee is also urging parents to remove their children from public school.
“Get them into private schools if you can afford it,” she said. “Get them into homeschool co-ops or homeschool them yourself.”
A transgender convicted child molester whose light sentence stoked anger at Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón was charged Tuesday with murder.
On Tuesday, Tubbs pleaded not guilty to the unrelated, April 21, 2019, murder of Michael Clark, whose body was found months later in the Kern River. Kern County Superior Court Judge David Zulfa referred to the defendant by his birth name, James Edward Tubbs, and ordered him held on $1 million bond in a men’s jail in Kern County.
Hannah Tubbs, trans child molester, pleads not guilty to murder, robbery chargeshttps://t.co/RHGortPVeO
In the earlier case, Gascón refused to prosecute Tubbs in adult court as part of his directive that minor offenders be tried in juvenile court, even for serious crimes. He claimed that since Tubbs was two weeks shy of his 18th birthday when he molested the girl, he belonged in a juvenile facility even though he is now 26. Gascón also refused to require Tubbs to register as a sex offender.
Fox News later obtained a recording of a phone call Tubbs made from jail in which he boasted to hs father about getting off easy.
“Don’t worry about it,” Tubbs said. “It’s a strike, but they’re gonna plead, I’m going to plead out to them and plead guilty.”
“You won’t have to register?” her father asked.
“I won’t have to do none of that,” Tubbs replied.
“So what are they going to do to you then?”
“Nothing,” Tubbs answered, then laughed.
Tubbs’ victim, who was 10 at the time of the attack, told Fox News that the handling of the case has been “insulting” and “unfair” to her.
“The things he did to me and made me do that day was beyond horrible for a ten-year-old girl to have to go through,” she told Fox. “I want him tried as an adult for the crimes he committed against me.”
“I’ve also heard that my attacker goes by she/them pronouns now,” she added. “I see it also unfair to try him as a woman as well, seeing how he clearly didn’t act like one on January 1st of 2014.”
Gascón, who is facing a recall attempt, was humiliated by the case and said he would re-evaluate his sentencing policies.
“While for most people several years of jail time is adequate, it may not be for Ms. Tubbs,” he said. “If we knew about her disregard for the harm she caused, we would have handled this case differently.”
An FBI SWAT team raided the home of an activist mother of four in Colorado on Tuesday, Nov. 16, knocking down her door, bursting into the house with guns and handcuffing her while she was homeschooling her children.
This is the first known case of the federal government making good on its promise to not only intimidate but actually carry out a raid on a mom who was involved in her local school board politics, said Brannon Howse, who interviewed Sherronna Bishop at Lindell TV Wednesday night.
The U.S. Department of Justice and Attorney General Merrick Garland issued an Oct. 4 memorandum directing federal, state and local law enforcement to look for parents to prosecute nationwide who may have made “threats” and made “harassing” phone calls to school board members nationwide, equating such parents to domestic terrorists.
Now a mother, Sherronna Bishop of Grand Junction, Colorado, has felt the brute force of the FBI’s heavily armed SWAT unit used against her family.
Sherronna Bishop has been active in school board politics throughout Colorado and operates a website that helps educate parents nationwide about their children’s education.
She was at home with her three children about 9:30 a.m. Tuesday when she heard someone pounding on the front door, then using a battering ram to break it down. She said the officers “manhandled” her 18-year-old daughter, pulling her up the stairs by her hoodie, while another officer put her in handcuffs and ushered her out of the house. They proceeded to search the entire house.
UPDATE AS OF NOV. 19: The FBI has filed no charges against Bishop.
Three of Bishop’s four children, ages 8, 10 and 18, were home at the time of the raid, as was her husband, who was also handcuffed. Her 17-year-old son was at his high school.
Besides being a frequent attendee at her local school board meetings, Bishop has also been active in the voter integrity movement in her state and locality. She runs the website Americasmom.net, and on that site she features an article and video under the title We the Parents: How Did We Get Here?
She said she has not been guilty of anything but speaking her mind in accordance with her First Amendment rights.
“This is still the United States of America, where we are able to state what we think and we believe,” she told Howse. “There was some pounding on my door. I didn’t really know what to think, I thought at first it might be some neighbor kids. They were pounding profusely, and then it hit me it was the FBI. I took my kids to their bedrooms. They used a battering ram to bash down my door, they cuffed me. And then proceeded to search and go through my whole home.”
She said the agents would not tell her why they were searching her home. They did leave behind documents related to the search warrant, saying they entered her home because she was suspected of causing “intentional damage to a protected computer, wire fraud and conspiracy to cause damage to a protected computer.”
“I don’t know anything about this. They couldn’t explain any of this,” she said. “I will tell you why: they were at my home to intimidate me, to shut me up, because I was using my First Amendment rights to advocate for [Mesa County Clerk] Tina Peters on the issue of Dominion [voting machines] and the damage done in our election. And they’ll never be held accountable. Instead they will criminalize this woman who has stood up.”
“I know people will say, well Sherronna, why don’t you just shut your mouth… That’s exactly what they hope you will do. I can open my mouth and say whatever I want to say and that is not a criminal action. This is about their desire to shut you down and stop you from saying it.”
“I’m a law abiding citizen, I’m very supportive of law enforcement,” she continued. “I love the Constitution. And what happened yesterday, what happened is something I never imagined I would experience in America.”
Bishop said she uses her website, AmericasMom.net, to educate and inform parents and moms regarding their children’s education.
“And since then we’ve gotten involved in school board races. I love my state. I’m a fourth generation Coloradan. Most recently I’ve been a very vocal advocate of a candidate [Peters]… She’s had to fight for her own life, and a guess now I’ll have to fight for mine.”
Bishop has been part of a group of parents that have been successful in fighting the teaching of critical race theory and school mask mandates.
“Colorado was able to flip nine school boards this year. We were able to get one of our leftists to resign and we also flipped our school board in the election,” Bishop said. “And people like me are considered domestic terrorists now, because we don’t stand for the policies that have been forced upon our children.”
Howse said history will be kind to Bishop.
“I believe you will go down in history as the first mom targeted [by the FBI]. The FBI has said it plans to do this and I believe you are the first mom to have this done to you. Mask mandates, opposing critical race theory, election theft, which Biden said if you question that you are involved in subversion. But I believe you are the first mom to have been targeted and had your door literally busted down while you were homeschooling your kids.”
Bishop said she has always made a point of being transparent.
“I have always made myself available, I’ve never tried to hide from anything and now for them to bash my door down, manhandle my daughter… I think the timing is really interesting, because we don’t want people to be silent because of what happened to me. If anything I want people to be more vocal,… because this is still America and you still have the right to stand up for yourself and your family.”
“I believe elections have consequences, and in this case this illegitimate regime is having serious consequences for all of America.”
Howse asked if she ever thought she would be targeted in this way by her own government.
“No I never thought in America that a suburban housewife and mom would have her door bashed in by the FBI,” she said.
He asked about her three children.
“My kids are very resilient. And part of schooling them has been to teach them the proper role of government and the proper role of law enforcement and I can’t convince them now that the FBI are good guys. And I really have my own doubts about that now. You cannot just say ‘I followed orders’ to go bash someone’s door down. They are responsible for what they are doing.”
Howse had just concluded a series of interviews with a panel of four retired FBI agents just days before the raid in which they had described similar raids against non-violent patriotic Americans over the last few years, starting with Gen. Michael Flynn in 2016, followed by the pre-dawn raid on author and Trump ally Roger Stone in 2019 and then the violent entering of journalist James O’Keefe of Project Veritas just last week.
“I was on the [FBI] SWAT team for several years,” said Brian Shepard, appearing with three other retired FBI agents at a symposium aired by WVW TV on Nov. 16. “And I can tell you from my experience, and I think all others of the bureau agents here would echo what I’m going to say. We never conducted a search or conducted an arrest of someone who was not a violent offender. And the thought when I heard about what happened with Roger Stone, just outraged me so much that, it just rose up inside me.”
Now, an activist mom has been targeted, raising the question: Has the FBI become the political shock troops for the White House, seeking to harass and intimidate anyone who speaks out against its policies?
Howse said it was obvious that Shepard became emotional when he began talking about how the bureau, he gave the better part of his life to serve, had now taken to bashing down the doors of non-violent American patriots.
“Brian’s reaction is very typical of men in that generation who served in the FBI, and many of those men have responded the same way, because they gave the best years of their lives to the agency, and upheld what they believed were the values of the agency, bravery, integrity and fidelity, and they become emotional when they saw how this has been discarded. They are beside themselves. It happened to others and now it happens to you, within days of our filming [of the panel].”
Bishop said the timing was not lost on her.
“I can’t explain it. I can’t explain being a target, for an agency that typically takes down the cartel, human trafficking, and now I’ve had my children traumatized and if this can happen to me, they’ll come for you too.”
“I made myself completely transparent to them and yet they chose to break down my door, terrorize my kids and try to intimidate me.”
She said the agents took her phone and other devices and kept her handcuffed for at least 30 minutes.
“No, I never had any access to any voting machines. They know I am just a voice, an advocate. We must have been effective. I know the people here, they’re not going to back down, and we’re not going to stop. In times past they never would have moved forward on this, but the narrative in America right now is one that is pushing a progressive narrative of communism. Now you can stay in your home and talk about it privately but you dare not come out and talk about it publicly …or they will send the FBI to your door because according to this regime you are a domestic terrorist.
“We’ve got to stick together and we can’t let these thugs put us into fear and intimidation.”
Howse said he was shocked by the news of Bishop’s experience.
“I could see them moving against someone like me, or Mike Lindell. It is hard to see them coming after someone like you, to come after a mom, who is working at the school board level and the election level, and to bust your door down? This is totally unprecedented by the agency in how they conducted themselves. So even for someone who has studied communism and a color revolution, the way they are doing it and the pace at which they’re doing it, I never anticipated it to move this fast.”
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A leaked audio recording revealed Californiateachers mocking parents over concerns about homosexual and transgender indoctrination at school, said a source who attended a recent teachers union conference in Palm Springs.
The recording, obtained by The Epoch Times, captured two seventh-grade teachers, Kelly Baraki and Lori Caldeira from Buena Vista Middle School in Salinas, Calif., telling other teachers how to recruit students into LGBTQ clubs, also known as “Gay-Straight Alliance” (GSA) clubs, at school.
“It was horrifying to listen to not just one teacher but really all of the teachers in all of these seminars, excoriating parents,” said the source, who goes by the pseudonym Rebecca Murphy.
Murphy attended the California Teachers Association (CTA) conference in late October. She told The Epoch Times the teachers “mocked” parents for their concerns, and suggested they know better than parents about what’s best for their children.
“They laughed at the parents,” Murphy said.
The sold-out CTA conference, billed as the “2021 LGBTQ+ Issues Conference, Beyond the Binary: Identity & Imagining Possibilities,” was held Oct. 29 to 31.
The CTA has hosted similar “Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity” (SOGI) professional development training for at least the last two years, according to an event notice posted on the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) website, which asks teachers: “Do you have the courage to create a safe environment that fosters bravery to explore sexual orientation, gender identity and expression?”
However, according to Murphy, the purpose of conference in Palm Springs appeared to be about teachers showing other teachers how to undermine the authority of parents and school administrators and conceal activities related to gender inclusion and sexual orientation from them.
The three classes Murphy attended were designed to recruit middle school students to GSA clubs, she said.
“The overarching theme of the classes that I attended were California Teachers instructing other teachers on how to sneak in the LGBTQ+ curriculum in a manner that does not alert parents,” Murphy said.
Caldeira and Baraki led a workshop called “How we run a ‘GSA’ in Conservative Communities,” and they described the obstacles they faced as activist teachers in concealing the activities of these clubs from parents.
In the audio clip, Caldeira advised teachers who lead LGBTQ clubs to maintain an air of plausible deniability so they can play dumb if they are questioned by parents.
“Because we are not official, we have no club rosters. We keep no records,” said Caldeira, who is also an LGBTQ club leader. “In fact, sometimes we don’t really want to keep records because if parents get upset that their kids are coming? We’re like, ‘Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe they came?’ You know, we would never want a kid to get in trouble for attending if their parents are upset.”
Baraki backed up Caldeira’s advice, suggesting activist teachers to disguise the nature of GSA clubs by calling them something less obvious. Baraki provided an example of this deception, pointing out she avoided naming her LGBTQ club a GSA. Instead, she called it the “Equity Club” and later changed the name to the “You Be You” club.
The teachers bragged about spying on students’ online searches and activity as well as eavesdropping on their conversations to identify and recruit sixth-grade students into these LGBTQ clubs whose membership rolls are kept hidden from parents.
They suggested that parents who refuse to call their child by pronouns of the child’s choosing should be arrested and charged with child abuse, Murphy said.
Buena Vista Middle School falls under the jurisdiction of the Spreckels Union School District (SUSD). Another nearby district, Salinas Union High School District (SUHSD) has been a center of controversy over its mandatory ninth grade ethnic studies program, which teaches elements of critical race theory.
SUSD Board President Steve McDougall, Superintendent Eric Tarallo, and school board members did not respond to Epoch Times inquiries about the leaked audio. Neither did Caldeira and Baraki.
Anti-Bullying Presentation
Caldeira also discussed a yearly anti-bullying presentation she provides to students along with Baraki, and she said LGBTQ issues were not the only topics they discussed.
“We also covered religious differences, race, cultural backgrounds, family status poverty—everything that is listed in the Parents’ Rights handbook.”
However, when the kids went home and talked to their parents about the presentation, the parents complained about the LGBTQ content. Baraki suggested a different strategy to avoid resistance from parents.
“Next year, we’re going to do just a little mind-trick on our sixth graders. They were last to go through this presentation and the gender stuff was the last thing we talked about. So next year, they’ll be going first with this presentation and the gender stuff will be the first thing they hear about. Hopefully to mitigate, you know, these kind of responses, right?” Baraki said.
Baraki ridiculed a parent who complained she hadn’t planned on having a conversation about sexual orientation and gender identity issues with her middle-schooler but was pushed into it by the school.
“I know, so sad, right? Sorry for you, you had to do something hard!” Baraki told her audience. “Honestly, your 12-year-old probably knew all that, right?”
When a principal suggested to another parent to enroll their child in a private school over the controversy, Caldeira said, “We count that as a win.”
Controlling Morning Announcements
Caldeira also spoke about how she controls morning announcements at the school.
“That’s another type of strategy I can give you,” she said. “I’m the one who controls the messaging. Everybody says, ‘Oh, Ms. Caldeira, you’re so sweet, you volunteered to do that.’ Of course, I’m so sweet that I volunteered to do that, because then I control the information that goes out. And, for the first time this year, students have been allowed to put openly LGBT content into our morning announcement slides.”
She went on to boast about the students she recruited to help with the announcements.
“Three of the kids on the team, two of them are non-binary, and the other one is just very fluid in every way. She’s fabulous. So, it’s actually a nice group,” she said.
Caldeira pointed out more than once that she can’t be fired, and she thanked CTA for her tenure and for providing resources and tools.
“You can’t fire me for running a GSA,” she said. “You can be mad, but you can’t fire me for it.”
“CTA has made it very clear that they are devoted to human rights and equity,” she added.
Caldeira tells teachers, that she and Baraki have acted with “great integrity.”
“We never crossed a line,” she says. “We’ve wanted to, but we never have.”
School Response
After information about the leaked audio was made public this week, Supt. Tarallo, SUSD President McDougall and Kate Pagaran, the principal at Buena Vista Middle School, issued a letter Nov. 19 addressed to the “SUSD Community” that the “UBU You Be You” club has been suspended.
“Any future student clubs will be required to submit an outline of all activities and materials before being allowed to meet,” the letter states. “Student sign-in sheets will be maintained and parent/guardian permission slips will be sent home prior to a club holding a meeting.”
The letter states that “all messaging shared in the morning announcements” will be controlled and distributed by the principal, a practice that “will be in place permanently.”
“Teachers are prohibited from monitoring students’ online activity for any non-academic purpose.”
SUSD will follow state-approved standards and curriculum on all presentations involving “sensitive themes such as sexuality” and “materials of any sensitive themes will be shared with parents/guardians before being shown to students,” the letter states.
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich equated current Speaker Nancy Pelosi to a “dictator” over her current stint presiding over the lower chamber during an interview this week with Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.
With House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy widely expected to take the gavel after the Democrats take their beating in 2022, Kirk asked the former speaker and presidential candidate if he had any words of advice for the California Republican.
Gingrich went for the jugular when speaking about Pelosi on “The Charlie Kirk Show.”
https://youtube.com/watch?v=9SwyQznSQyc
“I’ve thought about it,” said Gingrich. “I’ve thought about how do you handle certain kind of problems? First of all, I think Kevin’s done a good job overall.”
“It’s very hard job. And he has done a balancing act. He’s faced with a dictator,” he added of Pelosi.
“And I mean this literally: Nancy Pelosi runs a dictatorship,” he said. “She kneecaps people. She coerces them, she does things to Republicans that are a violation of 240 years of American history and she is extraordinarily destructive freedom.”
“She’s a thug,” he added. “She brutalizes people, she runs over them. She establishes rules that are crazy.”
Do you agree that Pelosi is a “thug?”
He also accused House Democrats under Pelosi’s leadership of subverting rules when meeting with “whistleblowers.” He told Kirk that Democrats often conduct their dirty business away from the Capitol so as to avoid having to be transparent by not having their guests check in with the Capitol Police.
“She has established on the House side of the hill a dictatorship, and literally … the Senate today is much freer and much more open than the U.S. House,” Gingrich also said. “It’s truly humiliating. And you can see that everything we think of as freedom is being crushed by the Pelosi dictatorship.”
“I think it’s truly more frightening than the Justice Department, because in the end, if you end up with a Congress which is totally dictatorial, it will then lead to an even more dictatorial government,” he concluded of Pelosi.
Pelosi has of course unilaterally forced her mask mandate on House members. Just this week, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia announced she had accrued $60,500 in Pelosi’s mask fines.
2. The only time I wear a mask is when I have to fly.
I have $60,500 in mask fines from Nancy Pelosi, who is a hypocrite because she does not wear a mask at times.
Here she is during the vote on Infrastructure bill, with her mask down.
Of course, who can forget that Pelosi also initiated a military occupation of the U.S. Capitol grounds earlier this year that lasted months. That occupation was handled by partisan Gen. Russel Honoré:
I salute the urgent, diligent & strategic work that he and his team continue to do in this mission. https://t.co/tHYs94ZDaF
Then there was this week’s Pelosi-backed censure of GOP Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona regarding a meme he posted online.
Is there anything more dictatorial than a tyrant eating ice cream on late-night television while people across the country worry about their next meal? Is there anything more thuggish than a woman whose district was locked down last fall while she enjoyed being catered to by a hairstylist?
BREAKING: Nancy Pelosi’s office has confirmed the speaker got her hair cut indoors in a San Francisco salon, but released a statement claiming she didn’t know she’d done anything wrong. https://t.co/cEEr1p074r
Nancy Antoinette, as some began to call her last year, has taken the speakership in a dangerous direction. Like other Democrats in the COVID era, she revealed herself as little more than a power-hungry bully with no interest in holding historic mores or basic ethics.
As Gingrich so eloquently put it, the woman is a dictator.
Parents of teens who say they are transgender are keeping their eyes fixed on a court case that could lead to taxpayer-funded gender reassignment surgeries for minors.
One parent, who goes by the pseudonym Charlotte Jacobs to protect the identity of herself and her daughter, told The Epoch Times that she and other parents of teens suffering from gender dysphoria are paying close attention to the case.
“There are no studies that show that this surgery or any type of gender affirming surgery alleviates gender dysphoria … so it’s an elective surgery,” Jacobs said. “Why should taxpayers pay for this?”
Two plaintiffs, minor teenagers known as D.H. and John Doe, sued Arizona Medicaid because Medicaid does not pay for breast removal surgeries. The plaintiffs are seeking a court injunction to stop Arizona Medicaid from complying with its own rules against covering gender reassignment surgeries. Doe was 15 and D.H. was 17 when they filed the lawsuit.
“D.H. and John are unable to obtain the medical care that is a critical next step in their ongoing treatment for gender dysphoria,” states the lawsuit. “As long as the exclusion is enforced, they are barred from obtaining male chest reconstruction surgery.”
Jami Snyder, Director of The Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System is listed as the defendant in the case.
D.H. has since turned 18 and has dropped out of the case.
A lower court denied an injunction, ruling the plaintiffs had not shown they were likely to succeed on their claim that their exclusion from coverage violates the Medicaid Act.
John Doe has appealed the case, which is scheduled to go before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Nov. 19 in Phoenix.
“These two kids have a history of mental illness, including suicide attempts,” Jacobs claimed. “And, of course, they’re going to conflate and say that these suicide attempts are because they’re not getting their gender affirming surgery.”
There are also no studies that show undergoing surgeries will prevent these children from committing suicide, Jacobs said.
“In fact, the opposite is true,” she said. “There’s a 19 percent increase in suicide post surgeries.”
An amici curae (friends of the court) brief submitted for teens who had double mastectomies, but now regret the surgeries states they “believed that removing their healthy breasts would resolve their gender dysphoria and permit them to live healthy, well-adjusted lives,” but later learned that surgery “did not resolve the psychological issues underlying their gender dysphoria, but only increased their distress as they realized they had irreversibly altered their bodies based upon ideology.”
One of the teens is Keira Bell, a 24-year-old woman who changed her mind and “detransitioned” after gender reassignment surgery in Britain. She sued Britain’s National Health Service’s clinic for transgender youth—which in three appointments led her into a “devastating experiment” using puberty blockers at 16, and later a double mastectomy. The court later ruled that it’s unlikely that children under 16 can give informed consent for such puberty-blocking drugs.
Jacobs blames transgender activists, the media, Hollywood, the medical community and public schools for promoting the indoctrination of susceptible teens often suffering from depression into believing they should permanently alter their bodies through surgery to be happier. She disagrees with “gender affirming” therapy, which she believes only further indoctrinates already confused kids.
“All this transgenderism is part of the bigger social contagion that is happening, where all over Tik Tok and YouTube you can find before-and-after pictures of young girls with big smiles … of absolute euphoria after they remove their breasts,” she said.
Jacobs said the growing trend among gender dysphoric teens to have their breasts removed, and then post images of their surgical scars on social media is shocking and similar to anorexic girls posting images and videos of themselves getting thinner and thinner.
“YouTube actually was required to take all of those down,” Jacobs said. “But this is the same thing. It’s a social contagion of girls thinking that they’re going to be happy and that their mental illness will be eradicated if they would only cut off their breasts.”
If the court rules in favor of taxpayer-funded surgeries in Arizona, Jacobs expects the case could go all the way to the Supreme Court.
The Justice Department’s watchdog says the nation’s top law enforcement division must do a lot more to restore the public’s faith and dispel the belief among a growing number of Americans that it is a political organization rather than a non-partisan arbiter of cases.
The DOJ “has squandered public trust by straying from its own policies designed to avoid the appearance of political bias and meddling and by permitting some employees to escape accountability for misconduct by leaving the department before investigations were complete, the agency’s chief watchdog is warning,” Just the News reported Thursday, citing the findings of the department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz.
His office’s criticism of the department comes amid blowback from the public and lawmakers for failures related to the so-called “Trump-Russia collusion” counterterrorism investigation, which has been discredited, as well as the discovery that Attorney General Merrick Garland has tasked the FBI and all 93 U.S. attorneys with assisting in the investigation of parents who complain to school boards about the curriculum being taught to their kids.
Also, the findings come after the FBI raided the homes of Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe and two of his associates, which alarmed even left-leaning civil libertarians.
“The Department faces a challenge in addressing public perception about its objectivity and insulation from political influence,” Horowitz noted in the report, going on to cite recent polling data indicating a growing number of Americans believe the department has become politicized.
“The Department’s efficacy as the guardian of the rule of law depends on maintaining the public trust in its integrity, impartiality, and ability to effectively administer justice,” Horowitz added.
Just The News adds:
The watchdog cited several recent IG investigations that found the James Comey-era FBI misled the FISA court in the Russia case and wrongly usurped prosecutors’ powers by declining prosecution in the Hillary Clinton email probe. He also noted more recent failures, including continuing FISA warrant problems, a bungled sex abuse case involving female Olympians, and reports the department faced pressure to investigate allegations of fraud and misconduct in the 2020 election.
In many instances, rules and policies in those cases weren’t followed, to the detriment of the department’s reputation and public trust, he noted.
“One important strategy that can build public trust in the Department is to ensure adherence to policies and procedures designed to protect DOJ from accusations of political influence or partial application of the law,” Horowitz noted in the report.
To that end, Horowitz went on to say that the public’s trust has been devastated in large part by the department’s failure to discipline culpable officials and instead allow them to retire before final determinations are made and cases are simply closed without any actions being taken.
“Accountability is particularly challenging in instances where the Department employee retires or resigns before allegations of misconduct can be fully adjudicated,” Horowitz wrote, pointing out that 10 percent of the department’s misconduct cases that were pending before the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility in the years 2017 and 2018 were closed after the staffer resigned or retired.
“We concluded that this FBI practice adversely impacted the FBI’s ability to hold employees accountable for their misconduct, was unfair to employees wrongly accused, and wasted OIG and FBI resources,” Horowitz wrote.
“Adjudicating all cases to conclusion, as recommended by the OIG, will ensure that employees who choose to leave the FBI while under investigation cannot escape a finding of misconduct that could affect potential future employment and other benefits,” he added.
“Another means of strengthening confidence in the Department is ensuring that attorney professional misconduct matters are handled no differently than misconduct allegations made against law enforcement agents or other DOJ employees,” the IG wrote.
“Currently the Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, a DOJ component that lacks the same statutory independence and protections as the OIG, has exclusive jurisdiction over allegations of misconduct by Department lawyers that relate to an attorney’s responsibility to investigate, litigate, or provide legal advice,” he said.
“Independent oversight of Department lawyers is a step towards broader accountability and improved public trust in the Department.”
The public school system has become a major battlefield in the war for the hearts and minds of our children.
It began decades ago, with leftists achieving such lofty goals as eliminating God from the classroom and denigrating America and its founding in the minds of generations of students.
Now they’re out to undermine parental rights and authority in the most fundamental way — by complying with the wishes of gender-confused children against their parents’ will.
In the euphemistic name of “affirmative care,” many schools are using the preferred pronouns and names of these troubled kids over objections from parents.
That’s exactly what happened in Wisconsin, where parents are now suing the Kettle Moraine School District for insisting on their 12-year-old daughter’s “transition” without their consent, NBC News reported.
The lawsuit was filed Wednesday in Waukesha County Circuit Court on behalf of two sets of parents by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty and Alliance Defending Freedom.
According to legal filings, the girl was experiencing anxiety and depression and “began questioning her gender” in December 2020, prompting her parents to withdraw her from school and send her to a mental health facility for treatment.
Rather than helping her sort out her confusion, the facility convinced the girl that she was a boy and should begin living as a male.
Her parents were concerned about this and communicated as much to the school as they hashed out the details of her return to the classroom in mid-January.
Are public schools indoctrinating children in leftist orthodoxy?
But instead of honoring the parents’ wishes to put the brakes on their daughter’s “transition,” administrators at Kettle Moraine Middle School informed them that they would use the girl’s chosen male name and pronouns as per the district’s policy.
Given no other choice, the parents withdrew their daughter from school again and kept her home for a few weeks, a decision that would prove fruitful.
“During that time, her demeanor quickly began to change, and about two weeks later, she changed her mind about wanting to transition to a male identity, deciding instead that she wanted to continue using her birth name and female pronouns,” the lawsuit said.
It’s difficult to imagine that she would have so easily discarded her new identity if the school and district had had their way.
WILL said in a statement that the school system denied this family the chance to take the “cautious approach” many doctors recommend, instead pushing the transition process that “can become self-reinforcing and even do long-term harm” to a child.
“The Kettle Moraine School District’s policy disregards these medical professionals and instead takes this life-altering decision out of parents’ hands and places it with educators,” the statement continued.
“By enabling minor students to transition at school over their parents’ objection, the district is effectively making a treatment decision without the legal authority to do so and without informed consent from the parents. This policy violates the constitutionally recognized rights of parents to raise their children.”
Public schools have no problem usurping the rightful authority of parents on this issue or any other because they’re true believers in the power of social engineering.
Children who are physically separated from their parents all day in government buildings are easily manipulated by the adults in charge.
Rather than acknowledging that they work for the taxpayers, teachers and administrators often see parents as obstacles to what is best for their children.
While that may be true in rare instances, the vast majority of children are better served by family members who love them and know them best.
The good news is that transgender ideology is so damaging, so absurd, that parents of all political stripes are taking notice and pushing back.
“You think the parents must be right-wingers or crazy,” Abigail Shrier, who literally wrote the book on the issue, tweeted last week.
“Then, gender ideology comes for your kid and you learn how many forces are stacked against parents. And these parents start to look more like heroes.”
You think the parents must be right-wingers or crazy.
Then, gender ideology comes for your kid and you learn how many forces are stacked against parents.
Shrier’s tweet came in response to footage of a protest at Stanford University, where pediatric psychiatrist and New York Times contributor Dr. Jack Turban is employed — just the kind of “expert” who supports this insanity.
America’s public school system has been a cesspool of the worst ideas and practices for years, but parents are only beginning to see how truly toxic their children’s schools can be.
The lawsuit against the Kettle Moraine School District is exactly the kind of battle we need to fight to put a stop to the madness.
A Floridaschool board member has filed a criminal complaint regarding a “disgusting,” sexually graphic book—found to exist in the media centers at three schools in Flagler County—which she believes violates state obscenity laws.
Flagler County School Board Member Jill Woolbright said she became aware of the book after seeing a video by a parent who read from the book at a school board meeting in Pennsylvania, “and it was disgusting.” The video bears a “GRAPHIC WARNING.”
According to a recent report, the book by George Johnson—”All Boys Aren’t Blue”—has already been removed from libraries in eight states. The North Kansas City school district pulled four of Johnson’s books from four high schools earlier this month following complaints from parents. On Nov. 8, Spotsylvania County Public School Board Members unanimously voted to have multiple “sexually explicit” books, including Johnson’s, removed from their libraries after concerned parents discovered the books were in the schools through a library app. Johnson himself begins his memoir with a content warning.
Woolbright discovered there were copies of the book in the media centers of three Flagler County schools, two copies at Flagler Palm Coast High School, one copy at Matanzas High School, and one copy at Buddy Taylor Middle School.
“In our county, we only have two high schools and two middle schools, and thankfully there were none in the elementary schools,” Woolbright said.
Now concerned, Woolbright conducted an internet search for the book and looked to see if the public library had a copy.
“Lo and behold,” Woolbright said. “They did.” After checking the book out of the library, Woolbright said she looked at the table of contents and saw two specific chapters that caught her eye. The first is Chapter 11, titled, “Boys Will be Boys.” She was appalled to find that the entire 15-page chapter—“not a paragraph, not a blurb, but a whole chapter described graphically this incestual encounter with a teenage cousin that came to his bed at night.”
A photo of the first page of Chapter 15—”Losing My Virginity Twice”—from the book by George Johnson on Nov. 14, 2021. (Jessico Bowman)
In Chapter 15—”Losing My Virginity Twice”—Jonson provides an extremely graphic recount of a sexual encounter he had with another man as an adult, giving readers detailed, step-by-step descriptions on how to perform numerous sexual acts.
“So I had enough information for me to know that this is not appropriate for any minor,” Woolbright said.
She then began researching policy regarding the selection of textbooks in Flagler County. While there are some guidelines regarding textbooks, she found nothing regarding media center books that would be available to students through the school library.
“So I sent an email off to county office with a lot of questions asking about a handbook asking about our policy and procedures on how we decide what media center books go into effect,” Woolbright said. The response she received said “it was a question that probably all the school board members would be interested in” and she should bring it up at a workshop.
Woolbright also searched state statutes, finding that Florida State Statute 01006 says it is the responsibility of the school board not only to provide oversight on all instructional materials used in a classroom but for books that wound up in the school libraries as well.
Woolbright also read Florida’s criminal statute regarding “any person who knowingly sells, lends, gives away, distributes, transmits, shows, or transmutes” or knowingly has in their possession for viewing any lewd or obscene materials to minors—including books—is guilty of a felony of the third degree.
Now “extremely upset,” Woolbright raised questions at a school board workshop regarding how they vet books and how they decide which books will be banned and if there are any banned books so far with county schools and policies and procedures. According to Woolbright, that was when Curriculum Director LaShakia Moore admitted they don’t even have any policies regarding books in the media centers and that they planned on getting together with the media center specialists in the county and start preparing. Woolbright asked to schedule a workshop to get started on that. While three out of the five board members voted for the workshop two said they don’t believe in any form of censorship and that they believe anything should be available to the children.
“So I’m like, OK. So at least I got a workshop,” Woolbright said.
Next, Woolbright called others to join her at her weekly three o’clock appointment with the superintendent Cathy Mittelstadt to share what she had learned. She called Curriculum Director LaShakia Moore, Assistant Superintendent Bobby Bossardet, Kristy Gavin the school board attorney, and the superintendent secretary. Only Gavin bothered to show up.
“So I played the video that I saw,” Woolbright said, admitting that she left the room because she didn’t want to hear it again. When the video was over they opened the door.
“They were visibly disturbed,” Woolbright said, “so we sat and talked for a long time. I said that under no uncertain terms I wanted whoever was responsible for placing those books in our schools to be held accountable and that I wanted them removed.
“The school board never approved this book getting into the schools that I’m aware of,” Woolbright insisted. “I believe that it was a crime and that it was a felony and I was assured they would take care of it.
However, while the title of the book has disappeared from the district’s catalog and two of the four books have been “removed from circulation,” she was told that the other two books—which had been checked out by students—“were still at large.”
“I had given them a week to act on it,” Woolbright said.
Unwilling to wait any longer, Woolbright contacted the Flagler County Sheriff’s Department and filed a criminal report, including a five-page witness statement.
During the course of investigating this story, The Epoch Times became aware of posts on the author’s Twitter page that appeared to be threatening Woolbright.
Screen capture of Twitter post from Keka Araujo dated Nov. 15, 2021 (Patricia Tolson/The Epoch Times)
“So now [a] Group of rednecks in Palm and Flagler Counties are insinuating that @IamGMJohnson is inciting violence,” Keka Araujo posted on Nov. 15. “Here’s the problem with that… This Black man was minding HIS BUSINESS and here comes racist Jill and her minions disrupting his peace.”
Johnson asked Araujo to “finish her!” in a reply.
While Araujo claims the threatening post was on “A PRIVATE GROUP ON FACEBOOK,” the comments actually appear on both of their very public Twitter pages. It is against the law (pdf) in Florida to threaten anyone through social media, including Facebook and Twitter.
“It should go without saying that harassment, assault, and credible threats of violence are all crimes in the state of Florida, regardless of political motivation,” Fla. Gov. Ron DeSantis’ press secretary Christina Pushaw told The Epoch Times. “Several Florida school board members, including Democrats and Republicans, have reported receiving threats and harassment from activists on both ends of the political spectrum. This is wrong, and anyone who is a victim of a crime should report it to their local police department.”
Screenshots of the potentially threatening posts and information on the social media accounts were sent to the sheriff’s department.
The deputy was also informed that several people, including a Flagler County student named Jack Petocz, are “organizing a student-led protest” to take place at the Jan. 16 school board meeting. According to Petocz’s Twitter post, he is accepting donations of Johnson’s book which he plans to distribute at the meeting.
Screen capture of Twitter post about protest being organized by Flagler County student Jack Petocz to distribute copies of Johnson’s book from Nov. 13, 2021 (Jessico Bowman)
“Here’s the thing, as soon as one of them passes one to a kid, that’s federal law,” Woolbright said. “Giving that book to children under 16, that’s federal law.”
“Florida law enforcement is perfectly capable of responding to crimes in Florida,” Pushaw said, “and we are confident that the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office will be able to investigate and respond appropriately.”
Monica, a parent in Flagler County, has also filed a report with the sheriff’s department.
“I found out there were books in the library that were completely inappropriate, particularly this one called All Boys Aren’t Blue,” Monica told The Epoch Times under the condition of anonymity. “So I actually bought the book. I had seen excerpts from it and how inapproriate they were but I wanted to see for myself, not just the excerpts themselves but what came before and after them. It’s really inappropriate. It’s shocking that this book would be in a school library and it’s actually against Florida law that this is available to children without parental consent.”
Monica filed her report with the Flagler County Sheriff’s Department on Nov. 15. Monica said the name of the deputy who took the report, which appears on the report itself, is “A. Pierre.”
“He wasn’t happy about it,” Monica said. “He told me I couldn’t file the report. That I had to go to the school’s resource officer because it’s an internal matter.”
Monica told the deputy that because she feels it’s a violation of Florida’s obscenity laws, it’s a legal matter and her responsibility to file the report.
Monica also told the deputy that people planned of distributing copies of the offensive book at the Nov. 16 school board meeting. “That’s also against the law, distributing sexual content to minor children,” she told him.
“Parents have the right to object to their children being exposed to explicit content like this, because parents have the right to make education decisions for their own kids,” Pushaw told The Epoch Times. “The special session this week will strengthen protections for parents’ rights and empower parents of public school students in Florida.
“It’s noteworthy that the Department of Justice (DOJ) memo was issued in response to the National School Boards Association’s (NSBA) letter to President Biden on September 29, in which the organization explicitly blamed opponents of critical race theory and forced masking mandates,” Pushaw said further. “The framing of the NSBA letter suggests that parents who criticize radical left-wing indoctrination or oppose the unscientific policy of muzzling schoolchildren are uniquely dangerous. The letter ignores the fact that liberal activists who support CRT and forced masking have been disrupting school board meetings, harassing elected officials they disagree with, and threatening conservative school board members.
However, Pushaw said the DOJ memo “conveniently ignores the conservative school board members and parents who have experienced harassment and threats from the left.”
“This shameful double standard has been established for some time,” Pushaw noted. “Violent left-wing protests are acceptable to liberals, but parents who protest the progressive agenda are smeared as potential ‘domestic terrorists’ who must be intimidated into silence.”
Johnson responded to The Epoch Times, saying: “What exactly do people think the journalist Keke Araujo is going to do? She is a writer. We ‘finish’ people with our words. Anyone with reading comprehension can see the tweet I responded to wasn’t threatening. Keke said she was going to write about her and I told her to do it. So it’s just another attempt to throw rocks (like filing a criminal complaint against my book against her own board policy) and then trying to hide your hands when the folks you attack respond. I’ve explained several times why this book is appropriate for teens. Teens will experience many of the same things I did. My book is not what harms them. Pretending they aren’t already experiencing these things in the real world and then removing resources that can help them is what harms them.”
Despite Florida’s obscenity laws, Johnson said “Woolbright’s effort is wrong because she solely has no right to deny teens and other parents who want the book the right to access it. Period.”
When asked if he had reviewed Florida’s obscenity laws, Johnson said “I have as well as my attorneys,” and that his lawyers disagree that the book would be in violation.
The Epoch Times reached also out to Flagler County Schools Superintendent Cathy Mittelstadt for comment. She did not respond.
The Epoch Times will be covering developments at the Jan. 16 Flagler County School Board meeting.
Allyn Walker – a transgender person – has been pushing “dignity” for pedophiles upon students.
A transgender professor from Old Dominion University has been placed on leave after a video of them advocating in support of people sexually attracted to children went viral on social media.
In the video, Professor Allyn Walker provided a positive stance on people termed “MAP” or Minor Attracted People. In an interview with Prostasia Foundation, Walker argued that stigma surrounding pedophilia “can lead to harm.”
The interview also led to Walker defending the term MAP because “the group want other to use” this term for their sexual attraction and inclination towards children. Despite having worked with victims of sexual violence, Walker went on to argue that the criminal processing system of pedophiles/MAPs cultivates institutional harms.
Walker has studied non-offending MAPs, leading to the release of a book urging for “dignity” for pedophiles. After an outcry regarding Walker’s beliefs and behaviors, Old Dominion University placed the professor on leave “for their safety.”
“Old Dominion University has placed Dr. Allyn Walker on administrative leave, effective immediately, from their position as assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice.”
Reactions to Dr. Walker’s research and book have led to concerns for their safety and that of the campus.
Furthermore, the controversy over Dr. Walker’s research has disrupted the campus and community environment and is interfering with the institution’s mission of teaching and learning.
“I want to state in the strongest terms possible that child sexual abuse is morally wrong and has no place in our society,” said ODU President Brian O. Hemphill, Ph.D. “This is a challenging time for our University, but I am confident that we will come together and move forward as a Monarch family.”
The actions we are taking today are motivated by our obligation to maintain a safe and conducive learning environment for our students, faculty, and staff.”
Dr. Allyn Walker has released the following statement:
“I want to be clear: child sexual abuse is morally wrong and inexcusable crime. As an assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice, the goal of my research is to prevent crime. My work is informed by my past experience and advocacy as a social worker counseling victims. I embarked on this research in hopes of gaining understanding of a group that, previously, has not been studied in order to identify ways to protect children.”
Thursday press conference set to expose top Chuck Schumer staffer, White House doctor and others caught, plus display more than 50 lbs. of pedophilic paraphernalia seized in the sting.
WHAT: Predator DC Season 2 Press Conference Announcing Dozens More Busts
WHEN: Thursday November 18, 2021, High Noon
WHERE: Predator DC HQ, 1599 N Colonial Ter Arlington, VA 22209
PREMIERING SOON: Following on the first Season of Predator DC, which exposed 18 DC-area sexual predators, Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman have carried out another sting operation catching dozens more pedophiles attempting to sexually abuse children. In this case, Predator DC made use of both a male and female decoy posing as underaged teens online.
Busted In Sting: Scott Mexic (Far Left), Andrew Koneschusky (Top Middle), Cid Praderas (Bottom Middle), Mark Hotz (Top Right), Mark Milford (Bottom Right)
For Season 2, Predator DC cooperated with local law enforcement to ensure the criminal prosecution of the predators caught in their sting. “We can’t thank the brave men and women of the Glenarden Police Department enough” Jack Burkman said. “In particular, we owe a great deal of gratitude of Sgt. Shelby and Cpl. Covington” added Jacob Wohl.
Throughout the sting operation, sex predators brought a bevy of paraphernalia which they planned to use in the course of their molestation of decoys who they believed to be underaged teens. This included high heels, lingerie, condoms, sex toys of all kinds, booze and narcotics. Predator DC seized more than 50 pounds of the paraphernalia in cooperation with law enforcement, to prevent it from being used by the predators on other children.
Andrew Koneschusky, age 40, served as the national press secretary for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Prior to that, he served as the national press secretary for disgraced Former Congressman Anthony Weiner. Currently, as a Partner at CLS Strategies, he lobbies for Qatari state-owned media company Al Jazeera and drone manufacturer DJI. Koneschusky came to Predator DC’s sting house, rigged with hidden cameras, to have sex with a decoy posing as an underaged teen boy.
Predator DC’s hidden cameras rolled as Koneschusky (age 40) poured alcohol and clanked glasses for Predator DC’s decoy posing as an underage teen boy.Hidden cameras captured the moment that Koneschusky began stripping naked while demanding that the decoy show him his genitals.
Koneschusky’s arrival at the sting house in a suburb outside Washington DC came after he exchanged a series of very sexually explicit messages with the decoy who he believed to be an underage teen boy.
Andrew Koneschusky was confronted by Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl as he stood half naked, demanding to see the decoy’s private parts.
Koneschusky also brought narcotics known as ‘poppers’ to use on the boy he believed to be underaged. The FDA says they are tracking ‘increases in deaths and hospitalizations’ related to poppers.
Just before his arrival at the sting house, Koneschusky sent the decoy this photo, showing the poppers he planned to use on the boy he believed to be underaged.
The operation nabbed dozens of DC-area sexual predators who happen to be in positions of power, public trust and great influence. This included many people who possess top-secret security clearance.
Predator DC Producer and co-Host Jacob Wohl peers out a top story window with binoculars to get a closer look as a sex predator arrives at the sting house.
Scott Mexic, age 64, had a long and storied career as an operations officer at the Central Intelligence Agency, spying oversees from Europe to Afghanistan. In recent years, he’s taken up a second career in investment banking, currently serving as a principal at CIH International and as a partner at Ingenris, LLC. At Ingenris, Mexic recently led the purchase of British Telecom’s Latin American assets. Mexic traveled across state lines to Predator DC’s sting house to have sex with a girl who he believed to be just 15 years old.
Scott Mexic (age 64) looks over as he’s interrogated by Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman after coming to meet a 15 year old girl.
Mexic, like many of the predators caught in the sting, came bearing neatly wrapped gifts for the decoy, who he believed to be a 15 year-old girl home alone while her father traveled out of town on business. Mexic lavished the decoy with food and bottles of wine. He also brought an aroma therapy device, balloons filled with disturbing written messages, an herbal aphrodisiac known as ‘Blue Lotus’, edible marijuana and a sex toy. He admitted during the interrogation that he planned on drugging and then molesting a 15 year old girl.
Jacob Wohl cuts open the packaging of the sex toy brought by Scott Mexic, as Mexic (off-screen to the left) watches.
Mexic stated that it was his “first time” coming to meet an underaged teen from the internet for sex. All but one of the other Predators said the same.
Mexic shed his sweater and watched as Jacob Wohl opened one of the many wrapped gifts brought for the decoy posing as a 15 year old girl.
The depraved nature of the predators caught in Season 2 was shocking to the show’s producers Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, as well as the show’s allies in law enforcement.
One predator, an official for the State of Maryland, stripped naked upon entering the home to meet an underaged teen girl. Jacob Wohl handed him a towel to cover up with, before interrogating him.
Cid Praderas, age 66, has worked as an engineer for NASA for the past two decades. After sending numerous pictures of his genitals to Predator DC’s decoy posing as an underaged teen, Praderas came to the sting house for sex.
Praderas (age 66) pretended to be confused about where he was when confronted by Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman for questioning.
After exiting the sting house, Prederas stuck around in the neighborhood attempting to warn other perverts as they converged on the sting house.
Praderas captured on camera as he roved through the neighborhood, flashing his lights and honking his horn to warn fellow pedophiles that a sting was underway.
Cid Praderas’ efforts to warn other perverts as they approached the sting house were short lived, as he was swiftly pulled over and apprehended by officers from the Glenarden Police Department.
In some cases, predators spent hundreds of dollars on inappropriate gifts for the decoy, who they believed to be an underaged teen.
Mark Milford brought a bag of gifts for the decoy posing as an underaged teen, but quickly left the sting house when confronted by Wohl and Burkman.
Milford (age 62) looks at chat logs showing images of his genitals that he sent the decoy who he believed to be an underaged teen girl.
Milford sent some of most explicit chats ever encountered by Predator DC.
Milford walks away from the sting house with his eyes cast down as he carries away his bag of gifts.
Mark Hotz, age 62, works as an official at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the federal agency which regulates banks. He came to the sting house to have sex with Predator DC’s decoy posing as an underaged boy.
Hotz (age 62) puts on his shoes as he’s interrogated by Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman.
Many more Predators were caught in Season 2 of Predator DC. Some of those not discussed in this press release include a White House Doctor and a DOJ official, among many others.
A sampling of more of the pedophiles caught red-handed and interrogated in Season 2 of Predator DC.
SEASON 1 FINALE: Predator DC’s Season 1 Finale airs this Wednesday at 9 PM EST on PredatorDC.com.
IMPORTANT: Thursday’s press conference will expose the perverts caught in Predator DC’s second season. Exclusive content from the filming of Season 2 will be unveiled for the first time. The Predator DC cast and crew will be available for questions from the media.
ALL SUBJECTS ARE PRESUMED INNOCENT UNLESS AND UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY IN A COURT OF LAW.
To report an incident or suspicious situation that may involve the sexual exploitation of children, file a report on the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC)’s website at www.cybertipline.com, or call 1-800-843-5678.
FBI spokesperson says bureau not ‘in the business of investigating parents who speak out’
An unnamed whistleblower disclosed documents suggesting that the FBI is using its counterterrorism resources to investigate parents or individuals who threaten school board members, teachers, or other staff, according to a letter sent by the House Judiciary GOP dated Tuesday.
The GOP letter included copies of the documents allegedly sourced from the FBI whistleblower that included an email sent by Carlton L. Peeples, who serves in the bureau’s Inspection Division, saying that the Counterterrorism and Criminal Division “created a threat tag, EDUOFFICIALS, to track instances of related threats.”
“We ask that your offices apply the threat tag to investigations and assessments of threats specifically directed against school board administrators, board members, teachers, and staff,” the email reads. The email was signed by Counterterrorism Division Assistant Director Timothy Langan and then-Criminal Division assistant director Calvin Shivers.
In their letter on Tuesday, the Judiciary Republicans said that Attorney General Merrick Garland testified in front of a House panel that the FBI and Department of Justice were not using counterterrorism resources to target threats against school board members. However, the newly unveiled document, they argued, disproves Garland’s comments.
An FBI spokesperson told The Epoch Times on Tuesday evening that the bureau “has never been in the business of investigating parents who speak out or policing speech at school board meetings, and we are not going to start now.”
“The FBI’s mission is to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution. These are dual and simultaneous and not one at the expense of the other,” the spokesperson said. “We are fully committed to preserving and protecting First Amendment rights, including freedom of speech. The FBI’s focus is on violence and threats of violence that potentially violate federal law.”
Before a counterterrorism investigation can be opened, there has to be information that indicates the possible use of violence or force, or a potential violation of federal law, the FBI spokesperson continued.
But according to House Judiciary Republicans, the whistleblower’s disclosure is evidence that federal law enforcement used counterterrorism resources at the behest of a “left-wing special interests group” to go after parents, referring to a letter that had been sent by the National School Boards Association several weeks ago linking parents who are concerned about school curriculum to domestic terrorists. It further said that the FBI and federal agencies should use the PATRIOT Act and other tools to go after parents.
After the initial letter was sent by the National School Boards Association, Garland issued a memorandum directing the FBI to address an alleged “spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence” and create “dedicated lines of communication for threat reporting” on the matter. But on Oct. 23, the school boards group issued an apology to the White House over the language included in the letter.
Now, the whistleblower’s disclosure “calls into question the accuracy and completeness” of Garland’s testimony before the House Judiciary panel last month.
“If … you were aware of the FBI’s actions at the time of your testimony,” the Republicans wrote, the document “shows that you willfully misled the committee about the” Department of Justice’s use of counterterrorism tools to target parents.
During the House Judiciary Committee hearing, Garland denied allegations that his agency would label concerned parents as domestic terrorists.
“Justice Department supports and defends the First Amendment right of parents to complain as vociferously as they wish about the education of their children, about the curriculum taught in the schools,” he told lawmakers on Oct. 21.
Garland also suggested that Republicans were mischaracterizing his memorandum, saying it only pertains to threats of violence aimed at school employees and teachers.
“This is not about what happens inside school board meetings,” the attorney general remarked. “It’s only about threats of violence and violence aimed at school officials, school employees, and teachers.”
After the National School Boards Association issued its initial letter, dozens of school boards around the United States have cut ties with the group. On Monday, the Kentucky School Board Association said its members voted to withdraw their membership.
A New Hampshire student is suing his high school for violating his right to free speech and religious beliefs after being disciplined for stating there are only two genders.
The freshman and football player for the school, identified as “M.P.” in the lawsuit, received a one-game suspension for violating the school district’s transgender student policy.
The student made the comments on a school bus and then later in a text exchange with another student off school grounds.
The student’s attorney, Ian Huyett of the Manchester-based Cornerstone Policy Research, said his client is seeking permanent relief from the school policy under protections for free speech and religious belief in the state constitution.
Huyett said the student is a practicing Catholic and has the constitutional right to hold the belief that there are only two genders.
“As the United States Supreme Court has said, students do not check their First Amendment Rights at the schoolhouse gate,” said Huyett.
“In New Hampshire,” he added, “we have a strong tradition of our state supreme court holding that our state constitutional protections are more protective of individual liberties than the corresponding federal right.”
District Superintendent Dave Ryan released a statement on the matter noting that the district had only just learned of the lawsuit on Nov. 9 and is in the process of reviewing it with legal counsel.
“We will be able to share a statement once we have completed that review,” Ryan said.
Calls made by The Epoch Times to the Exeter Regional Cooperative School Board, which enacted the gender policy, were not returned.
According to the lawsuit, which was filed on Nov. 4, the matter originated from a conversation the teenager was having with another student on a school bus.
It was about a request a female classmate made during their Spanish class that they use only non-binary pronouns in Spanish to address her.
It was another female student, said Huyett, who took offense to comments she overheard his client make in a conversation he was having with another student on a school bus ride home. They included the Spanish language not having non-binary pronouns.
According to Huyett, that student obtained his client’s phone number and initiated a texting debate over the issue. That student took screenshots of the texts and gave them to the school.
The following morning Huyette said his client was pulled out of class and told he was being disciplined for violating the school’s gender policy.
In another pending lawsuit against a New Hampshire school’s gender identity policy, a parent of a Gilford School District student was angered to learn the district’s policy permits and encourages school officials to hide disclosures students make about their sexual orientation from their parents.
The parent’s attorney, Rick Lehmann of the Concord law firm Lehmann Major List, said his client is also challenging the district’s policy for officials to issue no-trespass letters to anyone who doesn’t use non-gender pronouns on school grounds.
Huyett says he expects there will be more lawsuits to come in New Hampshire on the issue because so many public schools have adopted policies similar to the one being challenged.
Huyett’s legal fees in the case are being fully funded by the Cornerstone Policy Research, a nonprofit organization founded by 2020, and now 2022, New Hampshire Republican gubernatorial candidate Karen Testerman.
Testerman said she founded Cornerstone because too many New Hampshire residents with Christian values were underrepresented in legal and political matters. She said what happened to Huyett’s client is a prime example.
“It’s disturbing to have schools trying to control people’s thoughts by instituting this propaganda through alphabet policies,” she said.
The New Hampshire cases are the latest in a steady stream of lawsuits around the U.S. on school policies on the use of preferred pronouns.
Earlier in March, Virginia gym teacher Tanner Cross was suspended after refusing to use preferred pronouns of students over pronouns consistent with their original biological gender.
A judge later lifted the suspension and the Virginia Supreme Court, in ruling on an appeal of the court decision, ruled that the suspension violated the teacher’s First Amendment rights.
Also in March, an appeals court in Ohio sided with a college professor who claimed his right to religious beliefs were violated when he was disciplined by the Shawnee State University where he taught for refusing to call a transgender student by her preferred pronouns.
In the recent U.S. landmark case The United States vs. Varner, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the courts have no authority to compel the use of preferred pronouns because no federal statute gives them that authority.
Journalist and The Gateway Pundit contributor Jacob Engels was hacked after exposing a filthy porn book in a Florida public school library.
Several weeks ago, my friend and investigative journalist Jacob Engels who often reports for the Gateway Pundit was removed with force by police during an Orange County School Board meeting in Orlando, Florida for exposing a disgusting graphic and pornographic illustrated novel being peddled to our public school children.
The video of him addressing the OCPS School Board, which was filmed by local journalist DatabattlesZ, quickly went viral after the news broke here first on The Gateway Pundit.
I have known Jacob for nearly a decade and his work exposing the political interests who orchestrated the sham trial that wrongfully convicted me in a DC federal court, had the corrupt Obama appointed judge in my case threatening him with arrest only because he dared defend me publicly and expose the epic corruption surrounding ever facet of my sham trial.
After he exposed the Orange County School Board for prividing pronographic material to minors, which is a violation of state law, left-wing activists hacked his website Central Florida Post, erased over eight years of journalism that has exposed Hillary Clinton and George Soros alike. They even left behind source code in Russian, to make it seem like Jacob’s website was built by the Russian state. This is an obvious smear tactic of the left, who tries to paint anyone who is for President Donald Trump or against the political establishment as a “foreign agent.”
During the politically motivated Mueller Investigation, I underwent the same demonic attacks on my livelihood and character, from the very same left-wing authoritarians who want to forcibly mask or vaccinate us, while allowing children to have access to graphic novels.
Jacob’s story is not uncommon. Millions of patriots are being targeted on a daily basis by Big Tech. His former hosting company even has ties to the Council on Foreign Relations, General David Petraeus, Goldman Sachs, and a host of globalist goons who hate America.
According to several internet security experts, sites like the Central Florida Post have been targeted by massive hacking operations, with no oversight or protection from the hosting company Bluehost, where Jacob’s website was formerly hosted.
Please donate to his Give Send Go today. Without outlets like The Gateway Pundit, or the Central Florida Post on a local level, we would have no idea about the criminality of the Democrats and Deep State.
Sex ed curriculum has received $26 million in federal funding
Thousands of Massachusetts parents opted their children out of a federally funded sex education curriculum that teaches kindergartners about genitalia.
Worcester Public Schools this week announced that 13 percent of its students opted out of sex education, including 20 percent of K-4 students. The “Rights, Respect, Responsibility,” or “3Rs,” curriculum teaches elementary students about gender identity and instructs high school students to act out scenes in which gay and transgender couples decide to have sex. The curriculum’s authors include one current and one former Planned Parenthood employee. It is published by Advocates for Youth, a progressive group that since 1995 has received $26 million from the Centers for Disease Control.
Progressive advocacy groups are escalating efforts to expand sex education curricula to elementary schools and cover controversial issues such as gender identity and abortion. Commonly known as “comprehensive sex education,” this approach has angered parents, many of whom have flocked to school boards to oppose curricula.
The Worcester School Committee in May adopted the 3Rs curriculum following hours of heated debate between parents and activists. Worcester parents are able to remove their children from sex education lessons through an online opt-out form. Worcester Public Schools did not respond to a request for comment.
One of the parents leading this effort was Shanel Soucy, a single mother of three who had her first child when she was 15 and homeless. She says she opted her children out of the curriculum because it would not have helped her make better decisions as a child.
“We’re encouraging sex as being a way to cope in life,” Soucy told the Free Beacon. “It’s so dangerous. So many of these kids are developing habits that are carried out longterm.”
More than 3,000 of the district’s 23,000 students have opted out of sex education. Megara Bell, director of Partners in Sex Education, on Monday told the Worcester Board of Health that in her two decades of work on sex education, only eight parents in the area had opted their children out of sex education.
Area religious groups have lined up against the effort. Worcester bishop Robert McManus in September urged Catholic parents to opt out their children. Dozens of Worcester churches provided opt-out forms to their congregations, according to the Massachusetts Family Institute. Elise Almeyda, a Worcester pastor, says the curriculum will confuse children and enrich groups like Planned Parenthood.
“They want to sexualize kids at a very young age,” Almeyda told the Washington Free Beacon. “There’s definitely an agenda in the decisions being made. This is robbing the future of our kids.”
Advocates for Youth boasts that 3Rs is the first K-12 sex education curriculum. It has been adopted in 100 school districts and has reached more than 2.3 million students since it was released in 2016.
The curriculum includes lesson plans which instruct teachers to describe genitalia in gender-neutral terms such as “person with a vulva.” Lesson plans include role-play activities in which students enact scenes about how gay, bisexual, and transgender couples should become sexually active.
The Worcester Public Schools summary of the curriculum includes a plan to have high school students take a quiz on Planned Parenthood’s website about what contraceptives are best for them. The summary also includes plans to show seventh-graders a video from Amaze.org about asexuality and pansexuality. Another video for high schoolers promotes abortion and says that pregnancy centers deceive women.
The curriculum details ways in which teachers can make sex education more engaging for students. Fifth-graders are given a diagram of male genitalia to color with crayons as the teacher describes each part. One specific passage directs teachers to jokingly hold up a fake penis and announce that “today is the day” before they teach a lesson on condoms.
Advocates for Youth each year rakes in millions of dollars from progressive groups. The group has taken $20 million from the progressive Buffett Foundation since 2008 and has taken donations from the Packard and Hewlett Foundations. The group has a youth activism program called “Abortion Out Loud” that aims to “end abortion stigma and strengthen support for young people’s access to abortion.”
Geez…I really think I’m going to puke. WTF is happening? [US Patriot]
Inclusion, acceptance, welcoming, understanding, equality and affirmation: These are the words we often hear in support of the LGBT community. But should all sexual preferences and orientations be accepted, welcomed and included?
What about attraction to minors?
Allyn Walker — an assistant professor at Old Dominion University in the department of sociology and criminal justice who identifies as “non-binary” — wrote the book, “A Long, Dark Shadow,” to look more deeply into “Minor-Attracted People,” address the stigma around them and discuss how they should be treated.
To be clear, though, Walker is not condoning child sexual abuse in the book.
“And I want to be extremely clear that child sexual abuse is never ever okay,” Walker said in an interview discussing the book with the Prostasia Foundation.
However, Walker did clarify that “having an attraction to minors as long as it isn’t acted on, doesn’t mean that the person who has those attractions is doing something wrong.”
“I think we have a tendency to want to categorize people with these attractions as evil or morally corrupt … From my perspective, there is no morality or immorality attached to attraction to anyone because no one can control who they’re attracted to at all.”
This immediately brings into question the meaning of morality. In the simplest terms, morality is understanding what is right and wrong. But more specifically, morality is intricately tied to natural laws and what is innate in rational human beings.
It is not natural to be attracted to a child. That is why pedophilia is treated as a disorder.
Is pedophilia a sexual orientation?
“Because it causes harm to others, it is considered a disorder,” medical information reference Merck Manuals noted.
Walker, however, wanted to distinguish between those who act on this impulse and those who simply have it but do not act on it.
“And then just as importantly, many MAPs never commit a sexual offense against a minor. And that difference is important because when we don’t understand that distinction, we make incorrect assumptions about the likelihood of offending amongst MAPs,” Walker said.
“This leads to people believing that just because someone is attracted to minors, they’re likely to commit an offense. And we start to criminalize a population just because of their attractions. Not only is this a problem in terms of criminalization, but it also serves to heighten stigma against MAPs in general, which is a huge problem.”
However, Walker is wrong in equating pedophilia with crime. Pedophilia, of course, can lead to sexual activity with children, but attraction, arousal and behavior all fall under the definitional umbrella of pedophilia.
“Doctors diagnose pedophilia when people feel greatly distressed or become less able to function well because of their attraction to children or when they have acted on their urges,” Merck Manuals explains.
Psychology Today also lines up with Merck Manuals, defining pedophilia as, “recurrent and intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors involving sexual activity with a prepubescent child or children — generally age 13 years or younger — over a period of at least six months.”
Walker is attempting to make a distinction that flies in the face of medical information, trying to differentiate between attraction and action. But there is great danger in doing so.
If “MAPs” are just people who are attracted to children, but do not abuse them, why should they not be accepted in a society that is seeking to be inclusive and welcoming to all sexual orientations?
Following the same reasoning, this could happen with defining and diagnosing pedophilia. And there is a push to view pedophilia as a sexual orientation.
Toronto psychiatrist Dr. James Cantor has tweeted in the past, “Speaking as a gay men, I believe we SHOULD include the P. To do otherwise is to betray the principles that give us our rights.”
Speaking as a gay men, I believe we SHOULD include the P. To do otherwise is to betray the principles that give us our rights.
Cantor’s reasoning is correct. If our society keeps operating on the principles that give LGBT members the rights that they have, the same has to extend to pedophiles. If we follow that train of thought, attraction to children is just their sexual orientation.
There are even sites dedicated to pedophiles who are celibate, non-offenders. “Virtuous Pedophiles” is a social support group for pedophiles that promise to live celibate, non-offending lives.
The problem is that pedophilia is dangerous to children. Even if a person who is attracted to minors is determined to not act upon the impulse, having that attraction takes them one step closer to the potential of becoming an abuser.
So if pedophilia is accepted as just another sexual orientation and not treated as a disorder, that would also widen the door to “acceptable” abuse of children. If a pedophile has sexual interactions with a child, and the minor claims that they were abused, then the pedophile could hide behind their accepted, no longer termed as a disorder, sexual attraction.
As shocking as it may seem to talk about adding pedophilia to the spectrum of sexual orientations, it should be no surprise. By throwing out the conception that morality must align with what is natural, our society just opened Pandora’s box. This is just the fallout that we have to deal with now.
NCSBA’s separation follows the South Carolina, Ohio, and Missouri School Board Associations’ cutting ties from the NSBA after its Sept. 29 letter to the White House comparing parents to domestic terrorists.
Union County Public Schools Board Chair Melissa Merrell was on her way to an NCSBA convention when she received an alert from the NCSBA announcing its separation.
“It was a pleasant surprise,” Merrell told The Epoch Times. “I definitely did not see this coming. I’ve had a couple of board members who had been requesting and sending emails to the NCSBA asking if it were going to withdraw our membership from the NSBA, and they (the NSBA) had asked for our feedback, and then, on the way to the convention, we saw this message.”
Merrell said nothing was mentioned at the convention about the NCSBA’s departure from the national board.
According to Parents Defending Education (PDE), an organization that investigates indoctrination in schools, as of Nov. 9, 26 states have distanced themselves from the NSBA after the letter.
The NSBA, which represents more than 90,000 school board members and 14,000 public school districts in the United States, had written a letter to President Joe Biden asking that the parents who have protested COVID-19 restrictions and the teaching of critical race theory in public schools be regarded as domestic terrorists that should be investigated by agencies such as the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI.
This led to Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Oct. 4 memorandum to the FBI directing the agency to work with U.S. attorneys to “facilitate the discussion of strategies for addressing threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff, and will open dedicated lines of communication for threat reporting, assessment, and response.”
“The September 29 letter from NSBA to President Biden, in both its inflammatory language and the request for federal agencies to intervene in our communities, was just one in a series of lapses in governance,” said NCSBA President Amy Churchill in a press release. “NCSBA shares its members’ concerns about safety at school board meetings. As a proponent of local control, NCSBA believes that local law enforcement is in the best position to respond to those concerns and seek outside assistance if necessary.”
On Oct. 22, the NSBA issued an apology, stating that “there was no justification for some of the language included in the letter.”
State Response
The PDE requested statements from 47 states affiliated with the NSBA, and reported that the Alabama Association of School Boards (AASB) said it “has withheld its dues to join the NSBA for the current membership year, though AASB’s bylaws require it to be an NSBA member.”
According to the PDE, the AASB said it would be voting in December on changes to its bylaws that would give the AASB board of directors authority to determine its membership with the NSBA.
The PDE said it received no response from the Massachusetts Association of School Committees (MSCA), prompting the PDE to file a public record request for emails “to get a sense of their position.”
“It turns out that Glenn Koocher, executive director of the MSCA, was so happy about the letter that he put it in an email to NSBA CEO Chip Slaven,” the PDE said.
“We in MASC are all very happy that the NSBA has reached out to the FBI and, based on local coverage, has been identified as a key agent for generating federal support,” Koocher said in the email.
Thirty-six Republican state representatives asked that the South Carolina School Boards Association (SCSBA) end its NSBA membership.
“NSBA has labeled parents as domestic terrorists, with no evidence to justify that term,” the House Republicans wrote in a letter to the SCSBA executive director. “The reality is that parents and stakeholders are beyond frustrated being ignored and left out of decisions with their child. The NSBA is detached from reality and fails to recognize that Americans are angered by what is happening in our classrooms.”
SCSBA Executive Director Scott Price told The Epoch Times that the decision to separate from the NSBA was “aimed at protecting our membership from fallout from NSBA’s September 29 letter.”
“Any pressure that SCSBA was under stemmed primarily from our desire to keep this from impacting our members (local school boards),” Price said.
The NSBA did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
GQ Pan and Ivan Pentchoukov contributed to this report.
Writing for RealClearPolitics, Professor Andrew E. Busch of Claremont McKenna College finds that “one reason for Americans’ increasing political discomfort—the feeling that politics has become a blood sport in which traditional protections and safety nets are no longer present—is that the nonpartisan insulation protecting the rule of law and consent of the governed has frayed. There is a broad pattern of offices that require political neutrality being converted into offices that are genuinely partisan in their operation.”
What, I wonder, was his first clue?
Understandably, Busch concentrates on the most recent examples of this creeping partisanship in places that are supposed to be non-partisan, since the Biden administration represents a quantum leap in the politicization of everything, but especially of the law.
Attorney General Merrick Garland, he writes, “has already used the Justice Department to advance his own party’s version of the stolen-election story by suing to stop state legislative efforts to enhance ballot security, then threatening to sic the FBI on parents who complain to their local school boards about left-wing political indoctrination in the classroom.”
By contrast, Busch praises the non-partisan spirit of former Attorney General William Barr for resigning rather than supporting President Trump’s demand for a thorough investigation of election irregularities.
But then he can’t help noticing the concerted legal efforts by Democratic Attorneys General in swing states last year to change voting laws in order to create those irregularities—and, with them, the opportunities for cheating.
You can see why Busch wants to be even-handed and pretend that the partisan takeover of supposedly non-partisan institutions is coming from both sides, but he can’t quite obscure the fact that the overwhelmingly majority of these efforts have been made—and successfully made, thanks to the compliant media—on behalf of Democrats.
There is nothing like a Republican equivalent, for example, of the partisan takeover of the FBI under James Comey. “The course of the Russia investigation,” writes Busch, “complete with the obvious biases of Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, and Lisa Page, implied that the bureau had picked sides.”
Implied? Can there be any doubt about which side these and others in the bureau were on? Or which side Robert Mueller and his team were on? If there were any doubt about it, it must have been dispelled by the recent revelations, and indictments, coming out of the John Durham investigation.
Busch might also have mentioned the disparity in federal law-enforcement’s treatment of the Capitol rioters of Jan. 6 as constituting an “insurrection” and its almost complete lack of interest in the hundreds of riots, the billions of dollars in property damage and the many deaths that took place around the country last summer.
You don’t have to be particularly good at spotting “implied” biases to tell that the difference between the two was that the first was in support of Donald Trump, the others opposed to him. And, violently, opposed to the police. But why would we expect the federal police, ostensibly there to uphold the rule of law, to care about that?
Also, as I pointed out last summer in these pages, General Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the nation’s armed forces, traditionally our number one non-partisan institution, along with the judiciary, testified before Congress on behalf of the Democratic talking point by asserting on the basis of zero evidence that the Capitol riot was motivated by “white rage.”
Milley is also charged with weeding out of the services those identified by the extreme left as members of the “extremist right.”
But the perspicacious could have picked up hints of the erosion of the “nonpartisan insulation” of key institutions long before 2016.
The politicization of the judiciary, I would argue, began at least as far back as 1987 when a certain Joseph R. Biden, newly appointed chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, put the kibosh on President Reagan’s nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court for transparently political reasons.
Chief Justice John Roberts, who once said of his fellow judges that “we don’t work as Democrats or Republicans,” has gone to heroic lengths to keep up the pretense of non-partisanship in the judiciary, but then he is also the man who, apparently without irony, once called the U.S. Senate “the world’s greatest deliberative body.”
The politicization of the armed services began even earlier. As the late Colin Powell cheerfully put it in 2007, presumably with reference to his own military career, which started in the Vietnam era, “Anybody who becomes a senior officer had better have some political instincts or you’re going to get ground up. We are a political nation. It is not a dirty word.”
What he meant to say, perhaps, was that it is only a dirty word when applied to constitutionally non-political institutions. Like the military.
I understand that he was talking about the internal politics that are inevitable in any large organization, but in the military, whose most senior officers are appointed by civilian (and political) authority, those politics are always bound up with the other kind.
Under President George W. Bush we learned, at least if we were paying attention, of the politicization of the CIA, which regularly briefed the media (anonymously, of course) against their ostensible commander-in-chief.
Under President Barack Obama we learned, even if we weren’t paying much attention, of the politicization of the Department of Justice and the IRS.
And, as everyone now knows, under President Donald Trump we learned of the politicization not only of the FBI and (again) the Justice Department but also of the State Department. All three, while ostensibly serving the President, were actually undermining him.
It should not be necessary to point out that all of these encroachments of the political onto officially non-political territory have been in one direction and one direction only—leftwards. It’s as if there were some law of political inertia analogous to Robert Conquest’s Second Law of Politics: “Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.”
Maybe this is what the progressives mean by saying that they are “on the right side of history,” If so, it means that the rest of us, who still treasure what we think is our right to be non-political, must be on the wrong side of history.
Former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon is warning that he thinks “things are spinning out of control” for Joe Biden.
During an interview with Joe Hoft, Bannon warned that he has no idea if Biden is even in charge or who is calling the shots behind the scenes at the White House.
“If you look at really the policies of what President Trump stands for, two-thirds of the nation I think agrees with us and it’s time we start acting like we control the country. We do control this country,” Bannon began.
“People are responding and we’re winning and we’re going to win,” Bannon added.
When discussing Joe Biden, he argued: “He’s just so inappropriate on so many things…Not only is it radical, not only is it reckless, but it’s also gross incompetence.”
Bannon went on to slam Biden on rising inflation and the threat of China.
“It’s the cruelest tax on the elderly and the cruelest tax on the working class. I’m not sure anyone is running this country, I think it’s spinning out of control,” Bannon said.
“Their [Democrats and RINOs] radical plans, they tried to destroy this country. This thing with China is a disgrace,” he said.
“I think that’s a clearer and present danger. These advances in robotics, the advances in artificial intelligence, the advanced chip design, and the merger of those along with biotechnology and CRISPR, that is a real challenge to us. It’s technology that’s out of control and quite frankly gonna spin out of control, out of our grasp within, I think the next five or ten years,” he added.
Last month, Bannon warned
Bannon is warning Americans that they can use “psychological warfare” to their advantage to cut through the information noise from the elites.
During an episode on his War Room podcast, Bannon warned about what’s coming and how Americans need to be prepared.
“The first tenet of psychological warfare is to break you to become compliant to make sure all your actions and the human agency will be futile.”
He went on to warn about what’s to come.
Bannon continued with his warning of psychological warfare, saying, ” With information, you can be armed to take action in a world gone awry and that you will never succumb to psychological warfare which is to break your resistance which is to make you complicit.”
Last week, Bannon warned that The Economist has issued a new issue of their newsletter with the headline: “The Shortage Economy.”
Bannon called it a “tip sheet” for the elites and warns that America should take it seriously. He suggests that if even mainstream sources like the Economist are predicting doom, then it’s time for the American people to prepare and get ready.
“The revered Economist, what is their headline? The Shortage Economy. America needs to prepare… Get ready for the bleakest, darkest Christmas in living memory… This is far beyond stagflation,” Bannon said.
“We’re entering into another faze. It’s all the converging forces. Remember, elections have consequences, illegal elections have catastrophic consequences,” he added.
”This is why we’re in dangerous territory right now. Biden’s fiscal and monetary stimulus is the most reckless thing in American history. And you know who’s going to pay for that, the workers… I’m gonna tell you, This Christmas, it’s going to hit and it’s going to hit like nobody’s business. And nobody else in all media is going to tell you this,” he added.
Bannon is also the subject of the Democrats’ political witch hunt.
Unable or unwilling, so far, to go for Trump himself and issue him a subpoena they have trained their focus on Bannon, the host of the hugely popular “War Room” podcast.
It could be because Bannon hosts the popular show and they fear him as much as they fear Trump, or it could be that they believe they have a real case.
If you haven’t downloaded the War Room podcast, you’re missing out on critical information you can’t get anywhere else (and it’s FREE)!
Let’s get the groundbreaking podcast to 100 million downloads to show mainstream media and the left how strong this movement is!
NSBA leaders even altered the letter’s text to satisfy the Biden White House
Newly released internal emails reveal that the National School Boards Association coordinated with the White House and the Department of Justice before sending President Biden the notorious letter that compared concerned parents to domestic terrorists. Emails provided to Fox News show that NSBA had coordinated with the White House for weeks beforehand.
Viola Garcia, the NSBA president whom the Department of Education later named to a federal board, sent a memo to NSBA members on Oct. 11 (but dated Oct. 12), providing a timeline of the NSBA’s interaction with the White House ahead of the letter to Biden, which the NSBA sent on Sept. 29.
Five days later, on Oct. 4, the DOJ issued a memo directing law enforcement to investigate threats to school boards. On Oct. 22, the NSBA issued an apology for the letter.
“Concern over the current climate for school board members is also a top priority as disruptions at school board meetings grow and members face growing threats,” Garcia wrote at the time, according to the memo obtained by Parents Defending Education through a Freedom of Information Act request. “NSBA has been actively engaged with the White House, Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Education, Surgeon General, and other federal agencies on pandemic related issues.”
(Oregon School Boards Association)
“In the September 14, 2021 meeting of the [NSBA Organization of State Association Executive Directors] liaison group, they were informed there had been a meeting with White House staff that morning and that NSBA was preparing to send a letter to the President. Subsequently, on September 17, 2021, the interim Executive Director emailed notice to the state association executive directors that indicated a letter requesting federal assistance would be sent.”
“In response to the letter sent by NSBA, on October 4, 2021 the Attorney General announced in a memorandum widely shared throughout the U.S. Department of Justice that he was ordering all U.S. Attorney Offices and local FBI offices to reach out to local and state law enforcement officials to coordinate efforts on this problem within 30 days of the memorandum,” Garcia also noted.
This statement appears to contradict Attorney General Merrick Garland’s testimony to Congress on Oct. 27. When Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., asked Garland if he had “second thoughts” following NSBA’s apology for the letter, he said that the DOJ memorandum did not rely upon the letter.
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., calls out the attorney general for his memo directing the FBI to look into reports of threats against school board members and has harsh words for teachers union leader Randi Weingarten.
“The letter that was subsequently sent does not change the association’s concern of violence or threats of violence. It alters some of the language in the letter … that we did not rely on and is not contained in my own memorandum,” Garland said.
Neither Garland nor the DOJ responded to Fox News’ request for comment by press time.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland appears before the House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on Oct. 21. (Michael Reynolds/Pool via REUTERS)
Another email exclusively sent to Fox News revealed that NSBA had discussed the issues with the White House “for weeks” before sending the letter. Garcia and Chip Slaven, an NSBA executive, altered the text of the letter to satisfy the curiosity of White House staff.
“In talks over the last several weeks with White House staff, they requested additional information on some of the specific threats, so the letter also details many of the incidents that have been occurring,” Slaven wrote in a September 29, 2021, email to the NSBA board of directors.
Parents have spoken up at school board meetings around the country, protesting harsh COVID-19 mitigation measures like school closures, and raising their voices against transgender policies, critical race theory, and other issues. The letter warned that these parents pose a violent threat to school boards, even going so far as comparing them to domestic terrorists.
The fallout from the letter has proven particularly severe. Ohio’s, Wisconsin‘s, and the school boards of nine other states have reportedly terminated their relationships with NSBA, and parent’s education rights organizations have grown in prominence since the letter. The letter may have also emboldened concerned parents who supported Republican Glenn Youngkin, who won the Virginia governor’s race earlier this month.
Virginia Republican gubernatorial nominee Glenn Youngkin gestures during a [Loudoun Parents Matter Rally] campaign event in Leesburg, Virginia, on Nov. 1, 2021. (REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz)
Each year we tell the world of our gratitude for the sacrifices of those who keep us free. But our gratitude is not enough.
In America, it’s Veteran’s Day. Across the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth, it is Remembrance Day. In New Zealand, France, and Belgium it is Armistice Day, and in Poland, it is National Independence Day.
And it is an especially hard day in 2021, considering the sacrifices made by those who came before us, and the circumstances we have allowed to develop in their absence.
The fourth verse of For the Fallen by Laurence Binyon is the traditional Remembrance Day poem in the United Kingdom. Few have not heard it, even of younger generations:
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
But the first verse perhaps should give us more pause, this year:
With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.
And whether you are from England, American, Australia, Canada, France, Belgium, Poland, New Zealand, or otherwise, those final words should resonate.
“Fallen in the cause of the free.”
The people the world remembers today were not fighting for a political party, nor for an oligarchy. They were fighting for something we have let too easily slip through our fingers. Basic freedoms. Freedoms, in fact, from oppressive, overbearing governments with little regard for life, and only regard for ideological or partisan compliance.
And today’s services of remembrance sting that little bit more knowing what hell the West hath wrought in our decades-long foreign wars that have left so many without full lives or full families.
The draw down in Afghanistan just three months ago served as a reminder – which of course most have now already forgotten – of the fragility of Western military might. And indeed the futility of our abilities to project values in places where they bear no weight.
That very point separates the hills of Kandahar from the Flanders Fields, not that the sharpest minds in foreign policy and military strategy seem to recognize it.
But then again, they’ve been very wrong, for so very long. As Peter Hitchens noted in pre-COVID 2018:
It has also struck me, since I am so often told that those who fought in 1914 did so for our freedom, that we are far less free as a people, from all kinds of government interference, than we were before that war. It was 1914 that began the era of heavy taxation, surveillance, regulation and general snooping and bureaucracy which now stifle us.
It was also 1914 that swept away the restrained and quiet world of yesterday, and the great, stuffy cumbersome empires of Austria, Germany and Russia, replacing them with the slick murderous modern empires of the Nazis and the Bolsheviks. Was this progress?
It wasn’t progress. And no “progress” has been made since the world removed those evils it installed in place of the empires that came before them. In reality, all we’ve achieved in 100+ years besides the good technological advancements that came from some relatively free enterprises using capital to lift people from poverty is cementing the dark specter of centralization as a means of governance. Today, we reap what has been sown.
“Fallen in the cause of the free”?
We do little to prove we ever deserved their sacrifices.
Parents who never imagined running for office battled to win seats on local school boards last week; they won some, but lost many. Their fiercest opponents were the teachers unions.
The media portrayed these school board races as culture wars, but more than anything they were struggles by parents to wrest control of the boards from self-serving unions. For decades, the unions have maintained a tight grip on who gets elected. No wonder school district decisions—about budgets, masking, COVID closures, curriculum, and teacher contracts—protect teachers first. Never mind what’s best for kids.
That needs to change. Albuquerque, New Mexico, winning candidate Courtney Jackson told a local newspaper, “the board of education should be the kids’ union,” not a puppet of the teachers union. Jackson decided to run after watching the board discuss when to end lockdowns. The discussion focused entirely on what teachers wanted, never addressing the kids’ needs. “Their interests were not brought up once,” she said.
In Guilford, Connecticut, a small seacoast town, the Guilford Education Association, representing teachers, ran the show. In a questionnaire for school board candidates, the union’s No. 1 question asked candidates to pledge support for “collective bargaining rights.” Question two asked candidates to guarantee unions will be included in all discussions of the schools’ policies and funding. Question three asked candidates to promise to “oppose all proposals that would censor teachers from teaching about inclusion, diversity, and equity.” What about the kids?
All five Guilford candidates who gave the “correct” answers won the union’s backing and prevailed on election night. Their slogan was “Protect Guilford Schools,” but their true goal was “Protect the Teachers Union.” One of the winners boasted of coming from “a long line of educators,” while another promised, “I will listen to our teachers, administrators, and superintendent and respect that they act always in the best interest of our students and schools.”
Nearly everywhere, teachers unions use money and manpower to turn out voters. Challengers need to do the same. The three Albuquerque school board candidates who defeated the union slate went to the local chamber of commerce, other small business groups, and Republican party allies for alternate sources of money.
When the results were in, the president of the Albuquerque Teachers Federation predicted “a new dynamic on the board,” with some members actually disagreeing with the school district’s employees. Imagine that.
In Colorado’s cities, including Denver and Steamboat Springs, union slates won handily. But in Douglas County, Aurora County, and Greeley Evans School District 6, challengers outspent the union and broke its monopoly on school board seats.
After union-backed candidates were defeated in Douglas County, Kevin DiPasquale, president of the local chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, predicted big changes. In the past, teachers could just assume the school board “had their backs.”
In Montclair, New Jersey, the mayor, Sean Spiller, serves as president of the state’s largest teachers union but also appointed the school board—a blatant conflict of interest. The board negotiates the teachers’ contract. Last Tuesday, the town voted 70 percent in favor of replacing mayoral control with an elected board.
That’s an improvement, but electing the board won’t guarantee students become the priority. In New Jersey, the teachers union wields enormous electoral power with the support of Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy.
Although school board elections are often officially labelled nonpartisan, that’s intentionally misleading. In Tennessee and Florida, Republican state lawmakers are pushing legislation to discard the nonpartisan label so voters can see these elections for what they are.
Last week’s elections were just the beginning. Many school districts will elect board members sometime in the spring, instead of on Election Day. That’s by design to keep the public in the dark that an election is even happening, and to discourage turnout.
Parents and other concerned citizens have roughly half a year to gird for these upcoming contests. For anyone who has a child in public school, the stakes couldn’t be higher.
The other night I had a brief but remarkable dream. I was speaking out against a proud propaganda artist regarding a poster he intended to give out to his fellows. He was peddling the sort of agitprop that one would expect to find in our fallen world and I wasn’t having any of it.
Now normally I would remain silent on such matters in the waking world, but in the dream I was boldly speaking out against the worldly misinformation.
I was ruminating on this dream for the greater portion of the morning, and while being careful not to read too much into it, I started thumbing my woolen knots in order to calm my spirit and try to discern which prayerful meditation may have inspired these feelings of mutebreak within me. Then it hit me, these words from my newly discovered patron that I chanced upon in an icon:
“Brothers: it is later than you think. Hasten, therefore, to do the work of God.” – Fr. Seraphim Rose
What explicit conviction these words bring to the humbled heart! Too careful I have been in the past few years of wavering unbelief to speak out against anything. -Lord have mercy-
Despite an entire lifetime spent in the shade of the shadow of the cross, I could not make declarations outside of echo chambers for fear of being wrong, cancelled or sounding a neophyte. -Lord have mercy-
The wanderings through culture secular and sanctified, all to sound well-read and enlightened, and yet I was fooled by a prelest-like false peace. -Lord have mercy-
No more. And so here we are, how can I begin to describe the wellspring from which words become intelligible and articulated again. This much I can relate: it is not for me to boast.
Those familiar with the epic animated film “The Prince of Egypt” 1998, will remember a particular scene that can make a man cry. From the Burning Bush, the LORD answers a shying Moses thusly:
“…Who has made man’s mouth? Or who makes the mute, the deaf, the seeing, or the blind? Have not I, the Lord? 12 Now therefore, go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall say.” Exodus 4:11-12 NKJV
Moses has been thought to have had a stutter or some other sort of speech impediment, more reason to have been reluctant than I. Yet by heeding the voice of God he went on to become one of the most important figures of the faith, remembered and venerated for generations after.
What is the point of saying all of this at all? Why speak up now, after years of suppression in a feigned humility? In my zigzagging back towards the light, I have remembered what is truly essential to be spoken and shared, more so than any political opinion, any scientific declaration, any sign or wisdom or identity or nationality: “We preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness” 1 Cor 1:23 NKJV.
This, the entire reason behind the repetitions ’round my rope (Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Have mercy on me, a sinner), the one thing so worth saying that it has reignited the logos within me.
This supreme truth, from which all other conversations and creations may follow, and by which I would have a solid foundation to begin again using my talents, is the essence of what is at all worth saying, or gabbing.
In this little dark age we have all been living through, let all of us who have been called and gifted with the ability to speak, write or sing, do so.
May we use our God-given talents to build for the Kingdom of God by participating in the re-creation of our fallen world remade in the image of His Son Jesus Christ.
I pray that this short post becomes a sort of rallying cry for all of the “little-c” creators out there and I can assure you that there will be much more to come on this subject. That thrilling adventure of the escape from stagnation and silence and towards a pursuance of beauty & truth, or, a craving of the cup.
A group of Virginia parents say they have secured enough signatures on petitions to remove the school board chair they say has endangered their children and placed woke politics ahead of education.
Fight for Schools filed the recall documents in Loudoun County Circuit Court on Tuesday, according to The Washington Post.
The filing said board President Brenda Sheridan broke open meetings laws by using closed Facebook groups as a way to discuss school business without the public being aware. Sheridan is also accused of violating the First Amendment rights of parents by limiting public comment at meetings.
The board chair is also accused of mishandling a sexual assault case in the schools in which a student who was accused of a sexual assault was shunted from one school to another, where he has been accused of another sexual assault.
“Today, we just filed 1200 signatures to remove the chairwoman of Loudoun County School Board, Brenda Sheridan,” Fight for Schools Executive Director Ian Prior told Fox News. “We decided that for the chairwoman and the vice-chairwoman, the buck stops with them, that we were going to draft new petitions … We were able to finish those off in 13 days.”
The group says it also has petitions to remove Board Vice-Chair Atoosa Reaser and board members Ian Serotkin and Denise Corbo, all with more than enough signatures to meet the legal requirement to trigger a recall. In Virginia, elected officials can be recalled if a petition to remove them receives a number of signatures equal to 10 percent of the votes cast in the previous election, Fox reported.
Have school boards become rubber stamps for liberals?
The intent to recall all of the board members was expressed during a public comment period at Tuesday’s board meeting.
“By the way, Denise, Brenda, Ian, Atoosa, we are well over 100% of required signatures for the petitions,” Megan Jenkins said, according to Fox News. “So I’m not going to encourage any of you to resign because when you are recalled and removed from office, it will be much more satisfying. See you in court.”
“I have the privilege of telling you that we are finished collecting signatures for your removal,” parent Jessica Mendez said during the meeting.
“I used to think that there was no point in speaking at these meetings,” Mendez said. “There was no point in trying to have a voice because you never seem to listen, anyway. But I had it all wrong. It wasn’t you who needed to hear our voices. It was all those parents, grandparents and neighbors listening at home, horrified at your actions or inactions. They were the ones who needed to hear us, and they were the ones who sign petitions, see you in court.”
“For six months, Fight for Schools has been out collecting signatures in the heat, the cold, the rain and even hail,” Prior said on Monday. “To get 20,000 signatures during that time is a testament to the dedication of our volunteers and an engaged community that wants to see a change on its school board.”
“We are looking forward to the next steps and replacing school board members that are political servants with non-partisan public servants who will put the focus back on excellence in education,” he said.
Sheridan issued a statement in reply.
“My election was a mandate from those who came to the polls — three times — to choose me as their representative. Tuesday’s filing is the result of a fraction of those citizens signing a petition, whether they voted or not,” she said, according to the Post.
But Prior said change is necessary.
“From violating open meetings law to ignoring the school board’s code of conduct to neglecting to keep our children safe, all for her activist causes, Sheridan has been nothing short of a disaster,” Prior said, the Post reported.
“Let this serve as a message to the rest of the board and Superintendent Ziegler,” he said. “We’re still here, and we’re not going anywhere.”
Procedurally, if recall cases go to trial, a judge or a jury rules on the removal of a board member. The board then gets 45 days to appoint an interim replacement and 15 days to schedule a special election, according to Fox.
In addition to issues over student safety, parents have objected to the district embracing Critical Race Theory, as explained Tuesday night by parent Erin Dunbar, who accused the board of using tax dollars to teach “critical theory of the Marxist philosophy,” Fox reported.
“You have activist teachers using to indoctrinate their kids who are at the mercy of their authority,” she said. “That is child abuse. And you have no right to brainwash children into believing that their skin color determines their purpose.”
How much longer can this go on? As we head into the second year of the President Joe Biden “administration,” with the country in a shambles and heading no place good but full speed ahead, it’s time for all real Americans to take stock of our situation and formulate an emergency plan, with no time to spare.
Back in March, I wrote in these pages: “Biden’s Presidency Seems Ready to End.” In fact, Biden’s sham presidency never really began and whatever there was to it is now long over.
But then Brandon—excuse me! Biden!—isn’t really the president, simply the President in Name Only. Sure, he dutifully signs whatever executive order—increasingly authoritarian and blatantly unconstitutional—is put under his nose, which, at least until the next election, has the force of law until a federal court says otherwise. Even should a court block its implementation, as happened over the weekend with the illegal vaccine mandate being imposed on private industries by the Nixon-era excrescence of OSHA, the White House’s advice is to ignore it.
Biden also makes pro forma appearances on the international stage, including a mysteriously long audience with the former Cardinal Bergoglio (who’s every bit as much a pope as Biden is a president) that instantly gave rise to embarrassing rumors. And from time to time he even makes the short walk from West Wing to the Old Executive Office Building in order to stage something for the cameras in a studio-set version of the Oval Office.
But everybody in Washington knows the puppet presidency has no agency of its own, but is instead controlled from Kalorama by Barack Obama and his minions, including Ron Klain, who now serves as Biden’s chief of staff.
Meanwhile, the country he ostensibly leads is going to hell. We’ve gone from energy independence to passing the gasoline begging bowl, even as the forces behind Biden are busy choking off the domestic energy industry. Perhaps you’ve noticed the effects of this malicious policy at the gas pump.
Our long-neglected infrastructure, which is properly defined as roads, bridges, and buildings, remains a national disgrace, and the recent passage of a pork-laden $1.2 trillion “infrastructure” bill—with turncoat Republican help—not only won’t help a bit but will be paid for with imaginary money.
Overseas, right in Biden’s vaunted “foreign policy” wheelhouse, the Chinese are testing advanced missiles and expanding their fleet of aircraft carriers while what’s left of our Defense Department celebrates awarding four stars to a man in a skirt and hailing him as a “historic” female admiral.
A Navy sub’s trio of commanders was recently cashiered when the USS Connecticut struck an underseas mountain its crack officer corps somehow didn’t notice, while in San Diego the amphibious assault ship, Bonhomme Richard, was destroyed by an arsonist and a crew too incompetent to put out the blaze.
Oh yes, and the Marines recently got their tails kicked by the British in a desert-warfare exercise at their base at Twenty-Nine Palms in southern California. (The woke Marine Corps, of course, denies it.)
But the void in the White House is really the least of our problems, most of which we have brought upon ourselves. You get what you vote for and the American people, in rejecting Donald Trump, have voted for anarchy. As former New York City mayor Ed Koch said after being defeated for re-election in 1989, “the people have spoken, and they must be punished.”
Punishment is coming from every angle, principally from the criminal organization masquerading as a political party known as the Democrats. We now know that the vindictive but cunning loser Hillary Clinton set in motion the entire “Russian collusion”—in part with the collaboration of the Russophile leftist think tank, the Brookings Institution, and in part through the medium of a British spy channeling deliberate Soviet-style disinformation.
From the jump, it was obvious that the “Steele dossier” was a farrago of standard ex-KGB dirty tricks—in Russia and in Eastern Europe I’d seen this movie a dozen times—and I said so publicly at the time, practically from the day Buzzfeed published the “dossier.”
The American media deliberately weaponized this disinformation—which they knew at the time was false—against the lawfully elected president of the United States and crippled his presidency over it. And then they awarded themselves Pulitzer Prizes for their “reporting” of something that never happened.
Par for the course for the American version of Pravda. If you don’t think the New York Times hasn’t been in love with its Russian socialist confreres—and often actually been in bed with the KGB, its forebears, and its descendants—for the bulk of the 20th century, you need to wake up. Until the power of the Times is broken, the American Republic-as-founded will never have a moment’s peace.
But the weaponization didn’t and doesn’t stop there. “Former” members of the intelligence community now lie brazenly and openly on some of the “news channels,” such as CNN: the spooks are out of the shadows and in your living room.
The FBI is now investigating the alleged theft of Joe Biden’s daughter’s diary—a document that if genuine offers even more repellent insights into this stunningly dysfunctional family. How this is a federal matter is beyond me, unless the FBI has now become the Biden family’s private police force with a mandate to suppress bad news about the family. And if you don’t believe me, ask Hunter Biden.
Americans, quite properly, sense there’s something “off” about Biden and his crew, which is why his approval ratings continue to crater. But as long as the radical Left holds the media high ground, it’s hard for most people not obsessed by politics to grasp just how malignant these people are. For decades, they’ve made no bones about their desire to replace the United States of the founding with something “progressive.”
They’ve overtly collaborated with the Soviets, infiltrated the civil-rights movement, absorbed the legacy media, corrupted the lawmakers, overpowered academe, seized hold of the education of our children and now, in their moment of triumph, are forcing us to live in a fantasy world of their own psycho-sexual device, while their pet shrinks tell us that we’re the crazy bigots, via the media.
Speakers ‘acknowledge’ company campus located on Native American land
Microsoft is encouraging employees to begin presentations by stating their race, gender, and other physical characteristics.
Videos from last week’s Microsoft Ignite conference show employees reciting “visual descriptions,” which are meant to make blind audience members aware of presenters’ biases. In one video, program manager Allison Weins opened her remarks by saying she was “an Asian and white female, with dark brown hair.”
In a blog post released after the conference, Microsoft notes that it does not require its presenters to provide visual descriptions but recommends mentioning “distinguishing characteristics like hair color, race/ethnicity, gender, clothing, and background details to avoid unconscious bias.” The presenters at Microsoft’s conference all highlighted their race, preferred gender pronouns, and outfits.
One of the presenters who used visual descriptions, Nic Fillingham, directed the Washington Free Beacon to a video explanation of visual descriptions in which an activist explains the practice is “intersectional” and that visual descriptions “help fight racism, sexism, and classism.” Fillingham introduced himself by saying, “I’m a Caucasian man with glasses and a beard, I go by he/him, and I’m a security evangelist here at Microsoft.”
Neither Microsoft nor its PR firm responded to requests for comment.
In her opening remarks, Weins also noted that Microsoft wanted “to acknowledge that the land where the Microsoft campus is situated was traditionally occupied by the Sammamish, the Duwamish, the Snoqualmie, the Suquamish, the Muckleshoot, the Snohomish, the Tulalip, and other Coast Salish peoples since time immemorial. A people that are still here, continuing to honor and bring to light their ancient heritage.”
“Land acknowledgments” have come into vogue in recent years in social justice circles. According to the Portland, Ore., City Council, which carries out a “land acknowledgment” before every meeting, the practice can help “make amends” for centuries of colonialism. Microsoft frequently highlights its work with Native Americans, including hiring a Native American contractor for a day to help design a Native American video game character. Microsoft has not announced plans to return land it owns to indigenous peoples.
The town of Sammamish, the ancestral home of the Sammamish people where a major Microsoft campus is located, reported the highest median income of all cities in America in 2019.
Former President Donald Trump on Monday praised special counsel John Durham’s work, calling it “amazing” following the indictment last week of Igor Danchenko, who is believed to be a primary source of information contained in the infamous anti-Trump Steele dossier.
Wall Street Journal editorial board member Kimberly Strassel argued following Danchenko’s indictment that a more accurate description of that document should be the “Clinton dossier,” since it was Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign that, in part, funded it and people affiliated with the campaign allegedly fed false information used in it.
“It really has come out,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News. “In all fairness, while it has taken a long time, hats off to John Durham.”
“Hats off, because, it’s coming out, and it is coming out at a level — Durham has come out with things that are absolutely amazing,” the 45th president added.
“We all sort of knew that happened, and now we have facts, and I think they’re only going to get deeper and deeper — and it all leads back to the Democrats, Hillary and the dirty lawyers,” he said.
Trump said Clinton’s lawyers were always after him and the entire effort was a “disgrace.”
“What they did was so illegal, at a level that you’ve rarely seen before,” he said. “Now, in all fairness, it looks to me like this is just the early building blocks.”
Danchenko — a Russian national who worked at the liberal Brookings Institute in D.C. — was arrested on Thursday and charged with five counts of making false statements to the FBI regarding information he compiled and gave to former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, who used it in writing the dossier.
#Durham: 39-page indictment Igor Danchenko stands out because it makes the linkage between Clinton campaign/lawyer, opposition research known as “Steele Dossier” used by FBI to obtain surveillance warrants for Trump campaign aide @carterwpage + then Special Counsel Mueller probe. pic.twitter.com/XVGvUpfYnL
Steele had been hired by the opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which had been hired by the Washington, D.C.-based law firm Perkins Coie, paid directly by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
In September, Durham indicted attorney Michael Sussman for allegedly making false statements to the FBI. Sussman was a partner at Perkins Coie during the 2016 presidential race but resigned in September after the DOJ’s indictment.
In addition to Danchenko and Sussman, Durham charged former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith for changing the information on a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant application to surveil 2016 Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
“The purpose was to present the FBI with oppo-research that masqueraded as ‘intelligence,’ and it worked. Mrs. Clinton lost the election, but the Russia tale sabotaged an incoming President with relentless media assaults and a special counsel investigation. The country spent years obsessing over the Trump conspiracy that didn’t exist—rather than the Clinton conspiracy that did,” it argued.
“The Durham indictments treat the FBI as the duped party, but the record shows former FBI director James Comey and his investigators knew from the summer of 2016 that Clinton campaign fingerprints were all over the dossier,” the board said.
“A transcript in the Danchenko indictment suggests that FBI officials knew Mr. Danchenko was lying in the 2017 interviews. But they did nothing to blow the whistle, nor to tell the public or Congress everything they had learned about the origins of the Russia collusion tale.”
Do you think more people connected with the Clinton campaign will be indicted?
Strassel, who carefully covered the DOJ’s Russia probe and its aftermath, contended on the Fox News program “The Journal Editorial Report” over the weekend that in light of Durham’s discoveries, former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report “is looking more and more like a coverup.”
She shares Trump’s assessment that Durham is laying the building blocks for further charges.
“From what has been laid out in these indictments so far,” Strassel said, “there is a big cast of characters and plenty to choose from. And given, again, the way these indictments have been written, it certainly leads one to believe that there is yet more to come.”
In a Saturday opinion piece for The Hill, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley suggested that the cast could go all the way up to Clinton herself.
“Steele also has testified that it was his understanding that Clinton was aware of his work and the development of the dossier,” Turley wrote. “Yet during the campaign and long afterward, Clinton never admitted that her campaign funded the dossier, despite media and congressional inquiries about that fact.”
…The question is whether Durham really wants to indict just the tail if he can get the whole dog — a question which now may weigh heavily on a number of Washington figures, just as it did following Durham’s indictment in September of Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann.
The professor also tweeted, “The question is whether Durham really wants to indict just the tail if he can get the whole dog — a question which now may weigh heavily on a number of Washington figures.”
A group of intellectuals who have faced hostility for expressing their ideas are building their own institution of higher education in Austin, Texas, saying that they can no longer wait for the legacy universities to address the pervasive intolerance on campuses.
“We are done waiting for the legacy universities to right themselves. And so we are building anew,” wrote Pano Kanelos in a newsletter announcing the establishment of the University of Austin (UATX). Kanelos, the former president of St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, will serve as the founding president of the new school.
The goal of this educational initiative is to build a university “dedicated to the fearless pursuit of truth,” a promise Kanelos said appears in mottos of many prestigious institutions but is hardly honored in practice.
“There is a gaping chasm between the promise and the reality of higher education,” Kanelos wrote, pointing to recent incidents in which faculty were “treated like thought criminals” because of their unpopular viewpoints. Last month, University of Chicago scientist Dorian Abbot was disinvited by MIT from delivering a prominent public lecture after he expressed doubts about diversity hiring. Peter Boghossian, a philosophy professor at Portland State University, quit in September following “years of harassment by faculty and administrators.” Kathleen Stock, a professor at University of Sussex, England, was forced to resign after facing death threats from extreme transgender activists over her research on sex and gender.
Many universities no longer have an incentive to create an environment where “intellectual dissent is protected and fashionable opinions are scrutinized,” according to Kanelos. Instead, for many of the most prestigious schools, the primary incentive is to “function as finishing school for the national and global elite.”
Kanelos said he set up the UTAX to renew the purpose of higher education. His project is joined by journalists, scholars, business leaders, and public intellectuals including Niall Ferguson, Bari Weiss, Heather Heying, Joe Lonsdale, and Arthur Brooks. Peter Boghossian, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Kathleen Stock are the first three announced founding faculty fellows, who are tasked to design a curriculum and offer lectures and courses that “exemplify the pursuit of excellence in the service of truth-seeking.”
The UTAX will not be accepting undergraduates until 2024, but it is planning to launch at least three graduate programs, and will be rolling out summer programs as early as 2022.
The first summer program, according to the UTAX’s website, will be called “The Forbidden Courses.” It will invite students to discuss “the most provocative questions that often lead to censorship or self-censorship in many universities.” The goal of the course is to make students “proficient and comfortable with productive disagreement.”
An undergraduate college is planned to be open in fall 2024. The first two years of the four-year program will consist of “an intensive liberal arts curriculum, including the study of philosophy, literature, history, politics, economics, mathematics, the sciences, and the fine arts.” There has yet to be any news about tuition or scholarships.
In a call to action, Kanelos encouraged those who share the feeling that “something fundamental is broken” in higher education to join the effort.
“We welcome all who share our mission to pursue a truly liberating education—and hope that other founders follow our example,” he said.
A Detroit suburb with a history as a Polish enclave is making history of a different kind.
After elections on Tuesday, Hamtramck, Michigan, is set to become what is likely the first municipality in the country where every elected governing official is of the Muslim faith, according to the Detroit Free Press.
On Tuesday, Hamtramck voters elected three Muslims to its City Council to join the three Muslims already serving. Voters also elected Amer Ghalib, 42, a Muslim, as mayor, the Free Press reported.
The council will now have three members of Yemeni descent, two whose roots are in Bangladesh and one who is of Eastern European heritage who converted to Islam.
Councilman Mohammed Hassan said the council will govern for all.
“Religion is not inside the (City Hall) building,” Hassan said. “It’s outside in the mosque and temple and the church. Not in City Hall.”
Hassan added that “nothing will change in council, we remain the same.”
“We respect all the religions,” Hassan said. “Inside the City Hall, we are responsible for the residents … we do our responsibility by the book.”
Amanda Jaczkowski, who was elected last week, said the city’s government will serve all the people.
Do you see this happening in other jurisdictions in the U.S.?
“We will all take an oath … to protect the Constitution of the United States, and that includes the concept of separation of church and state. I believe strongly in that separation, and although I will bring the Islamic values of honesty and integrity to the table, the policies that I promote and affirm will be what is best for all people of Hamtramck,” she said.
Mayor Karen Majewski, who lost her bid for a fifth term, said she will work with the new leadership of the city.
“I’ve always cautioned people to not think about Islam as a monolith,” Majewski said.
“Remember that people come from different traditions within a shared religion. Individuals are different, too. They come with different experiences, different interpretations of their faith and different priorities. I would always caution people against creating a monolith in their minds about any religion,” she said.
Majewski and Ghalib have differed over LGBTQ issues: She supports flying the LGBTQ flag outside City Hall. He does not
Ghalib has said he is not opposed to any group based on the tenets of his faith.
“People think because of my background and my religious beliefs that I will be anti-LGBT or something, but we are in America,” he said.
“This is how democracy works, right?” Ghalib said. “You have to think about your constituents and what they would say. You don’t want to lose some people’s support.”
Adam Albarmaki, an immigrant from Yemen elected last week, said there will be no favoritism.
“I owe it to the people of Hamtramck, and my loyalty to them will remain intact,” he said. “Make no mistake, I do not represent the interest of a certain group over another. I will work diligently to ensure that the best interest of Hamtramckans is attained.”
Requirements as common in STEM as in social science
Nearly a fifth of university jobs require diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) statements that press applicants to express and expound upon their commitment to diversity, according to a new study from the American Enterprise Institute.
The study, from the Educational Freedom Institute’s James D. Paul and the American Enterprise Institute’s Robert Maranto, is the first to empirically estimate the prevalence of diversity statements in higher education, which they say may narrow the research questions that academics feel comfortable addressing.
Using a representative sample of 999 job postings, the study found that 19 percent require a diversity statement; that the statements are significantly more common at elite schools than non-elite ones; and that jobs in STEM—science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—are just as likely as jobs in the social sciences to require a diversity statement from applicants.
DEI statements have grown more routine in recent years, especially on the West Coast. Between 2018 and 2019, most schools in the University of California system mandated DEI statements for all faculty applicants, with a system-wide task force recommending that the requirements be standardized across UC schools. Such requirements soon made their way east: In 2020, a job posting at the University of Denver asked applicants “how you plan to integrate DEI into your role as a faculty member, including new or existing initiatives you would like to be involved with.”
The last finding surprised Paul, the director of research at the Educational Freedom Institute, who told the Washington Free Beacon it was a testament to the sway of DEI ideology in academia. He and Maranto had hypothesized that the more empirical a field, the less likely it would be to use “soft” criteria when evaluating applicants. But when they actually ran the data, that hypothesis collapsed.
“The most surprising finding of the paper is that these requirements are not just limited to the softer humanities,” Paul said. “I would have expected these statements to be less common in math and engineering, but they’re not.”
This swift march has not gone unopposed. City Journal‘s Heather Mac Donald has blasted DEI requirements as an assault on meritocracy, quipping that Einstein’s groundbreaking research had nothing to do with diversity, equity, or inclusion. Paul agreed, saying it was “concerning” that DEI has begun to “take precedence over merit.” The study notes that at the University of California, Berkeley, more than 76 percent of applicants to a life sciences post were eliminated on the basis of their DEI statements.
Others, like Maranto’s American Enterprise Institute colleague Max Eden, see the requirements as ideological litmus tests, loyalty oaths to a “woke” worldview in which equity matters more than education and free thought.
“Universities are conditioning employment on fealty to an ideology that is inherently hostile to the university’s traditional mission,” Eden said. “If colleges started asking prospective faculty about their patriotism or commitment to American ideals, you can bet there would be a mass outcry about academic freedom.”
Greg Lukianoff, the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), echoed Eden’s concern.
“The idea that someone looked at the current crop of professors and said, ‘There’s just not enough political homogeneity’ is remarkable to me,” Lukianoff told the Free Beacon. “I fear that higher education has become a conformity engine.”
That conformity, Paul and Maranto note, “may also result in a narrowing of research questions, with negative consequences for intellectual pursuits.”
The study, which reviewed postings on three popular online job boards, suggests that DEI litmus tests are not aberrational. They are now common at both public and private universities—especially the elite ones, which the study found were 18 percent more likely than non-elite schools to require diversity statements. The authors defined an “elite school” as any college or university in the top 100 of the 2020 U.S. News & World Report rankings.
Paul speculated that the market power of such schools lets them be extra ideological. If elite universities get more job applicants, he reasoned, they may “be able to prioritize this ideology without sacrificing anything in quality. They’re in a position to pick and choose, so why not choose someone who toes the line?”
The study emphasizes that the 19 percent statistic is likely a low-ball estimate. For one thing, Paul and Maranto only used the terms “diverse” or “diversity” to identify jobs that require DEI statements; postings that eschewed that language in favor of “equity” or “antiracism” weren’t counted under their coding scheme.
For another, the study only looked at job postings, not job applications. If some applications required diversity statements that weren’t advertised in public postings, Paul and Maranto’s results could be a significant undercount.
“I strongly suspect that if we went through the steps of applying for positions there’d be more jobs with DEI statements,” Paul said. “Our estimate is conservative.”
Komi German, a research fellow at FIRE, argued that the proliferation of DEI statements could ultimately backfire, constraining not just ideological but racial diversity.
“Hiring committees may actually emphasize the political and ideological components of DEI statements to make them more palatable to politically progressive white scholars,” German said. “After all, being white won’t count against them if they can pledge strongly enough their allegiance to DEI.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has remained out of public sight since getting a CCP virus vaccine booster shot on Oct. 27.
The governor’s office released a surprising announcement on Oct. 29 canceling Newsom’s plans to attend the United Nations climate summit in Scotland to deal with unspecific family obligations.
The governor’s spokesperson said on Oct. 29 that Newsom planned to participate in the climate conference virtually, but a delegation schedule released later did not feature any virtual events with Newsom.
Newsom spokesperson Erin Mellon said on Thursday the governor will participate virtually in “a couple” of the climate summit events next week. The office did not respond to questions on Friday about what the governor has been doing this week.
“The governor will participate in a couple events next week focused on global efforts to advance zero emission vehicles and to move beyond oil,” Mellon said Thursday.
The governor was last seen receiving a Moderna CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus booster shot on Oct. 27. The governor’s booster was a mix-and-match with the original regimen, which was a Johnson & Johnson (J&J) shot.
“I am choosing not to do J&J today not because I had any problems with J&J, in fact it went beautifully, but to make the point about the opportunity to mix and match,” Newsom said at the time.
The California governor should have appeared before TV cameras to announce the state’s CCP virus vaccination program for children aged 5 to 11. Atypically, the announcement was made via an emailed news release instead.
Newsom submitted some prerecorded remarks to a transit conference earlier this week and his office announced some appointments to state agencies and boards. He also posted a photo on his Instagram account with his wife and four children, aged 5 to 12, dressed as pirates on Halloween.
“Hope everyone had a safe, happy Halloween!!” the governor wrote in the post.
Newsom’s Twitter account was quiet from Oct. 28 until Tuesday, when he sent posts backing fellow Democratic Govs. Phil Murphy of New Jersey and Terry McAuliffe of Virginia on Election Day. As the week went on, Newsom’s Twitter account became more active.
It’s rare, but not unprecedented, for Newsom to go a whole week without some type of appearance. Such absences are usually explained, including when Newsom leaves the state for vacation.
It’s a relatively slow time in Sacramento as the state Legislature is not in session and won’t meet again until January. Recent storms mean no major wildfires are burning out of control, as has been the case in recent years.
Republicans in Virginia gained control of the state’s House of Delegates after Democratic leaders on Nov. 5 conceded that the GOP has gained the majority.
The concession by the Democrats means Republicans have completed a sweep of the elections, which already included the race for governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general.
House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn acknowledged the Republican majority shortly after Democratic Del. Martha Mugler conceded defeat in a race against Republican challenger A.C. Cordoza in the 91st House District. Mugler’s concession gave Republicans 51 seats in Virginia’s 100-seat House chamber.
“While the results of the election were not in our favor, our work for the people of Virginia goes on,” said Filler-Corn.
Garren Shipley, a spokesman for House Republican Leader Todd Gilbert, said Filler-Corn called Gilbert on Friday.
“The House Republican caucus appreciates her pledge to a smooth transition to the incoming majority,” Shipley said.
Democrats held a 55–45 majority heading into the election on Nov. 2.
Top Democrats, including Vice President Kamala Harris, saw the election on Tuesday as a barometer for key national races in 2022, which will decide control of the U.S. House and Senate. President Joe Biden won the state by a 10-point margin in 2020, making the election sweep a major red flag that the president’s progressive agenda is not playing well with voters.
The Republican statehouse victories are being seen as a backlash against a Democratic majority that has pushed through a series of progressive reforms over the past two years, including the repeal of the death penalty, a loosening of abortion restrictions, and the legalization of marijuana.
In the House of Delegates races, Republican Kim Taylor scored a surprise victory over three-term incumbent Democratic Del. Lashrecse Aird, giving Republicans the 50th seat on Nov. 3. Aird claimed victory late Tuesday, but a late surge by Taylor gave her a 741-vote win.
Democrats are still in control of the state Senate, holding a 21–19 majority until at least 2023. Republicans will nonetheless have veto power coupled with control of the lower chamber.
Republican Glenn Youngkin defeated former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe in the most-watched 2021 race on Tuesday. Republican Winsome Sears beat Democrat Hala Ayala in the race for the lieutenant governor’s office. Republican Jason Miyares beat Democratic two-term incumbent Mark Herring in the race for the attorney general’s office.
Youngkin’s victory and the near-defeat of New Jersey’s Democratic governor have sparked fears that Democrats are on course to lose control of Congress in next year’s midterm elections.
An Indianapolis-based public school educator and education journalist has gone viral on social media after he pushed back on the narrative that critical race theory (CRT) isn’t being taught in schools, warning concerned parents to not be deceived and to “keep looking” for its presence.
“When we tell you that our schools aren’t teaching critical race theory, that it’s nowhere in our standards, that’s misdirection,” Tony Kinnett said Tuesday in a video he shared to Twitter. He explained that he works as a science coach and administrator at Indianapolis Public Schools, Indiana’s largest school district that serves about 23,000 students.
“I’m in dozens of classrooms a week, so I see exactly what we’re teaching our students,” Kinnett said, noting that while the schools “don’t have the quotes and theories as state standards,” the teachers are incorporating the concepts of CRT into their teaching of a variety of subjects.
“We tell our teachers to treat students differently based on color; we tell our students that every problem is a result of ‘white men’ and that ‘Everything Western Civilization built is racist,’ ‘Capitalism is a tool of white supremacy,’” he continued. “Those are straight out of Kimberle Crenshaw’s main points verbatim in ‘Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement.’ This is in math, history, science, English, the arts, and it’s not slowing down.”
In June 2020, amid the nationwide unrest sparked by the death of George Floyd, the IPS adopted a racial equity resolution (pdf) to identify and correct practices and policies that may perpetuate racism, which is defined as “a white supremacy system” in which those considered white “oppress” those who are not. It also partly attributed the student achievement gaps to the district’s history of “privileging the prejudice of white parents over the interests of black and brown students.”
“If students of color have lower reading scores, it’s because of inequity,” Kinnett asserted. “Therefore, we take from the white students and give to the colored students. That’s Richard Delgado, straight out of ‘CRT: An Introduction.’”
“Parents, when we tell you critical race theory isn’t taught in our schools, we’re lying, keep looking,” he said at the end of the video.
Kinnett posted along the video screenshots of an email, which appears to show the IPS instructing school principals to tell parents and community members that CRT is not taught in their schools. He also posted slides that are allegedly used in the ISP, including one that explains some of the tenets of CRT.
Kinnett’s call to action comes as controversies around K–12 education, including the teaching of CRT and COVID-19 restrictions on campus, took center stage in many of the state- and local-level elections across the country. In Virginia’s gubernatorial race, Republican Glenn Youngkin, running on a “Parents Matter” platform, defeated former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe who said parents shouldn’t tell schools what to teach. In Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and other blue states, school board seats are claimed by candidates who oppose the Marxist ideological indoctrination and support parents’ right to make medical decisions for their kids.
The Indianapolis Public Schools didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
America has had it and the cracks in the veneer are showing. The expression of our outrage is heard in the chants of “Let’s Go Brandon!” at public events, seen among parents pushing back on radical educational agendas which insert trans ideology into curriculum in places like the Loudoun County school district where a trans identified male student sexually assaulted two young girls, and most recently, is explicit in the defense of Dave Chappelle by comedian and podcast host Joe Rogan of Chappelle’s latest Netflix special, “The Closer” after transactivists joined Netflix employees demanding Netflix pull his comedy special.
What do, “Let’s go Brandon!” and Dave Chappelle have in common? The catchphrase and the comedian have become targets by radical activists who seek to silence opposition, demonize detractors, and sideline anyone who threatens their radical agendas. People are done being pushed around and bullied into sitting down and shutting up.
As Gary Powell says in my latest film, “Trans Mission: What’s the Rush to Reassign Gender?”, “One thing that is particularly striking is that as soon as anybody expresses any kind of mild criticism of extreme gender ideology or any type of considered criticism or raises any doubts, they are denigrated as transphobes and as haters.”
That is what is happening today. Parents are being labeled as domestic terrorists and Dave Chappelle is being labeled as a transphobe and charged with hate speech. Fortunately, freedom of speech is a two-way street, and main street has had enough.
Signs of hope? I see plenty. Joe Rogan immediately threw his support to Chappelle, saying, “He’s not a homophobic or transphobic person. He makes fun of himself. Look, it’s fun. It’s just making jokes. That doesn’t mean hate.”
Other high-profile celebrities have voiced their support too. Piers Morgan expressed how refreshing it was that Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos didn’t cave to the activists request to cancel “The Closer” and even trans-female identified Caitlyn Jenner, said on twitter, “Dave Chappelle is 100 percent right.”
“This isn’t about the LGBTQ movement,” Jenner said. “It’s about woke cancel culture run amok, trying to silence free speech. We must never yield or bow to those who wish to stop us from speaking our minds.”
Not only are people with influence coming to the defense of free speech, biological reality, and even comedy, but the public is also weighing in with their support and their wallets. Most recently, Chappelle, joined by his pal Joe Rogan, played to a sold-out audience in New Orleans, telling the audience, “In the middle of me being canceled, we broke the attendance record.”
Jennifer Bilek said it best, writing, “Chappelle has given everyone permission to say the unsayable, and they are saying it, and they are laughing. They are laughing because this agenda is comedy gold, and no one has been tapping it, for fear of the very ridicule some are slinging at Chappelle. This time it isn’t sticking, and Chappelle has doubled down. He is not only too big to cancel, he understands the subtext and has called it out.”
As Chappelle says in “The Closer,” “All this talk about how people feel inside. Since when has America given [expletive deleted] about how any of us feel inside? And I cannot shake the suspicion that the only reason everybody is talking about transgenders is because white men want to do it. . . .No one asked you how you felt. Come on everybody, we have strawberries to pick. It reeks of white privilege. You never asked yourself why it is easier for Bruce Jenner to change his gender than it was for Cassius Clay to change his [expletive deleted] name?”
President Biden campaigned and promised in his first 100 days in office, he’d pass the “Equality Act,” but signed an Executive Order on “Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation” on day one of his presidency. The Equality Act seeks to obliterate biological realities, allowing anyone to self-identify into whatever sex they wish to be, and force the rest of us to just go along and be polite lest we be called haters and transphobes. But people aren’t having it. Let’s Go Brandon! Let’s Go Joe! And Let’s Go Dave!
One of the subtlest and most perfidious paths through which the cabal of elitist activists, industrial and commercial interests, and national and international politicians and bureaucrats are trying to “reset” capitalism to prioritize “woke” social justice and green priorities is through the co-opting and takeover of global capital markets: banks, insurance, and stock and bond trading and investment.
Big financial institutions such as Bank of America and Mastercard, investment managers such as BlackRock and Vanguard, and hundreds of corporations are going all-in to push environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics.
These powerful institutions would have ESG metrics replace capitalization, revenue, profits, and profit margins as the new way of evaluating businesses. Under ESG, returns on investment and returns to stockholders and owners are not as important as a company’s embrace of left-wing causes. These causes include how “green” a company is, having the “right” ratio of minorities on its board, avoiding involvement in politically disfavored industries (such as gun manufacturing and fossil fuel production), and other woke leftist considerations.
Companies are given a score or rating to determine how well they align with ESG goals, and banks will use these scores to make lending and other commercial decisions. Portfolio managers will use them to determine investment recommendations and propose initiatives and board choices to be offered at annual meetings.
Hundreds of the world’s largest corporations, including financial institutions, have already implemented ESG systems and reporting metrics within their companies. What’s more, investor groups worth trillions of dollars have pledged to prioritize these companies over those that refuse to participate.
For instance, BlackRock and other investment fund managers are pushing board memberships for green and gender activists and pushing initiatives to force the companies, in which they control large chunks of stock, to adopt policies that undermine their business model. For instance, they’re pushing Exxon and Chevron to get out of fossil fuel development, the very raison d’etre for the two companies’ existence.
In doing so, these companies are using the stocks placed in their management hands to promote the social goals supported by their executives, rather than to promote the income and retirement goals of the individuals and public and private pension funds of the stock’s ultimate owners. Rather than aiming at maximizing profits and increases in stock value to benefit individual stock owners or provide employees a secure, comfortable retirement, the companies are placing social equity and environmental justice goals at the center of their “investment” strategies.
This is dangerous for stock and bond owners, since research consistently shows funds guided primarily by ESG goals produce lower returns and are far riskier than investment portfolios guided by profits and generation of wealth for their investor/owners.
In addition, working with the United Nations, big banks formed the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) developed in April 2021. The NZBA is composed of 94 large banks from 39 countries (and growing) that have pledged to “transition all operational and attributable GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions from our lending and investment portfolios to align with pathways to net-zero by mid-century, or sooner, including CO2 emissions reaching net-zero at the latest by 2050.” (emphasis mine)
In practice, this means banks are planning to force businesses, investors, and hard-working Americans to adopt policies in line with banks’ climate change agenda, regardless of whether they agree with the banks’ goals or whether those goals are good for the people’s and companies’ economic well-being.
The Trump administration tried to tap the brakes on efforts by corporations and federal agencies to impose social justice and environmental requirements. Trump policies included ensuring ERISA plans (pension plans operating under the Pension Reform Act of 1974) regulated by the Department of Labor be managed with a sole and unwavering focus on providing for the retirement security of American workers. Also, under President Donald Trump, the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency proposed a rule to prohibit banks with more than $100 billion in assets from denying services such as lending and payment processing to businesses based on political considerations such as the type of industry they are in or whether they have adopted ESG codes, as opposed to normal business considerations, such as a company’s earnings, business prospects, assets, profit and loss statements, capitalization, and credit history.
President Joe Biden is actively rolling these rules back. Biden’s executive order on climate-related financial risks “mandates that Labor Secretary Marty Walsh submit a report to the director of the National Economic Council and the White House national climate advisor within 180 days that identifies actions taken by the agency ‘to protect life savings and pensions of U.S. workers and families from climate-related financial risk,’ and required the same of the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, which administers the Thrift Savings Plan for federal employees,” 401K Specialist reports.
In addition, at Biden’s direction, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has created a 22-member Climate and ESG Task Force to enforce the administration’s social justice and climate change goals. Simultaneously, the SEC issued a call for public comments on a rule to require publicly traded corporations, investment management firms, and mutual funds under its regulatory purview to disclose the climate-change-related risks and opportunities they might face.
To be forewarned and informed is to be forearmed.
Become an active voter, bank account owner, and investor. It’s no exaggeration to say the fate of Americans’ investments and pensions, whether people will be able to retire comfortably at a reasonable age, and whether markets will be used to build wealth or to push people in directions elites deem politically correct will be decided in the next two elections (federal, state, and local), in courtrooms, and during proxy battles at annual board meetings in the next few years.
Minnesota has seen in the latest school board elections a number of wins by candidates opposing critical race theory and COVID-19 restrictions, including in areas that traditionally vote Democrats.
In Anoka-Hennepin, Minnesota’s largest school district serving some 38,000 students and 248,000 residents, Matt Audette won by a margin of over 30 percent. The only key issue on Audette’s campaign website is preventing the infiltration of CRT, which he said divides students based on their skin color and teaches that the most important aspect of their humanity is not their character, morality, or actions, but their race.
While CRT is not incorporated as part of the curriculum in Anoka-Hennepin schools, the district has partnered with the Midwest and Plains Equity Assistance Center, an organization that promotes “anti-racism education” to analyze and address supposed “systemic racism” and inequity. “The school district did take a side, and they are siding with CRT,” Audette warned. “The use of this equity analysis in our schools will affect staff development, and it will eventually get into the classrooms.”
Instead of teaching “concepts of division and guilt” derived from CRT, Audette said he supports teaching about not only racism, but also achievements and successes in racial equality in the history of the United States. He also supports giving parents “complete access” to curriculum on demand.
A special one-year seat on the Alexandria School Board went to Maureen Eigen, who said in October that she opposes CRT because it “does not empower students of color” and “furthers segregation.”
“I don’t oppose CRT because of any political agenda. I oppose it because it’s not right,” she added.
In Lakeville, Cinta Schmitz narrowly won a special election for an open school board seat. A co-founder of local parental group “Informed Fully-Awake Parents,” Schmitz ran on a platform of allowing parents to make decisions for their kids when it comes to wearing masks and receiving COVID-19 vaccines.
“Keep divisive policies that teach racism and intolerance of people with different ethnic backgrounds or skin colors—whether it’s called CRT or any other equity-related term—out of our schools,” her campaign website reads.
The Minnesota wins could be suggesting a nationwide trend, too, according to the 1776 Project PAC, a political action group with the aim to combat CRT in K–12 education and help elect conservatives to school boards in the United States. The PAC reports that as of Wednesday, 44 of the 58 candidates it endorsed have either won or are leading in their school board races.
The 44 candidates backed by the PAC include 13 in Pennsylvania, with four of them sweeping seats in Perkiomen Valley School District, which serves the powerful Democratic bastion of Montgomery County. Also among them are 11 in Colorado, nine in Kansas, four in New Jersey, three in Virginia, and two each in Minnesota and Ohio.
Obviously, some books are better than others. This is something everyone should understand. A well-written book that tackles profound themes is far more likely to stand the test of time than a poorly written book that deals with superficial topics.
For example, Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” is a literary classic. That’s because it portrays the reality of slavery in the Antebellum South in a way that few other books have done. One cannot read that book without being deeply moved by the injustice of slavery.
However, “Huckleberry Finn” also contains inappropriate language, including a deeply offensive racial slur. As a result, some educators think that this book should not be held in school libraries or used in classrooms. That would be a mistake.
The problem with judging authors of the past by today’s cultural standards is that virtually no one measures up. This is why there is such a push among progressive educators to replace classical literature with contemporary books written by authors who espouse the “correct” ideology using the “correct” words—at least by today’s standards.
One can only wonder whether any authors from this century will measure up to whatever the prevailing ideology is several centuries from now.
At a recent meeting of the Waterloo Region District School Board, for example, the superintendent of human resources and equity announced that the board was in the process of reviewing every single book in school libraries. According to this superintendent, libraries haven’t been removing “inappropriate” books quickly enough.
“We recognize as our consciousness around equity, on oppression work and anti-racist work has grown, we recognize some of the texts in the collections that we have are not appropriate at this point,” stated the superintendent.
Not only is this verbiage typical of the gobbledygook often spouted at school board meetings, but it also reveals a profound lack of understanding of what education is all about. The notion that some books must be censored because they no longer conform to modern cultural standards is the antithesis of helping students become critical readers and thinkers.
It is only by exposing students to a wide variety of perspectives that we can help them become well-educated. The reality is that students are going to encounter ideas that challenge their core beliefs, whether we want them to or not. The only question is whether we want them to grapple with challenging concepts while in a classroom, or whether we think it’s better for them to just try to figure things out on their own after they complete school.
In addition, there is a world of a difference between culling library books due to space considerations and removing books because they might contain offensive material. Obviously, libraries have only a limited amount of space and it makes sense to remove books that no one is reading. On the other hand, it would be a travesty to remove excellent books such as “Huckleberry Finn” solely because they contain offensive language or reflect outdated cultural norms.
This does not mean that school libraries should be places where anything goes. Younger students should not have easy access to books with graphic sexual content, nor should school libraries be expected to stock books that promote blatantly false information (such as the works of prominent Holocaust deniers).
Unfortunately, censorship is becoming increasingly common in schools. For example, there has long been a concerted campaign to remove Dr. Seuss’s books from school libraries and classrooms because these books contain images and statements that are clearly inappropriate by modern-day standards.
However, a better approach would be to use these books as an opportunity for a teachable moment. Students should not only have access to classic literature but they should also be expected to study it and critique it. If students are going to grapple with challenging concepts, it’s best they do so by reading literature that has stood the test of time, and with the guidance of an effective teacher.
Hopefully, school trustees start pushing back against the woke ideology that undermines our kids’ education. There is a whole world of good literature for students to explore. Let’s not shelter our kids from reality.
Censorship is a poor way to promote literacy. If we want students to become good readers and thinkers, they need to read quality literature—including books that challenge their way of thinking.
Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel released a statement Wednesday marking historic wins for the GOP in Virginia, including control of the House of Delegates.
“On top of a clean sweep of the three statewide offices in Virginia, Republicans have retaken the House of Delegates in another sound rejection of Biden and Democrats’ failed agenda. The red wave is here, and things are only going to get worse for Joe Biden and the Democrats come November 2022,” McDaniel said in a statement.
Late Tuesday night, McDaniel also noted the Republican Party’s wins across the state as outlets began to announce Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin as the projected winner over Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe.
“The red wave is here! Congratulations to Republicans Glenn Youngkin, Winsome Sears, and Jason Miyares on their incredible campaigns and hard fought victories,” she wrote.
McDaniel said the sweep sent a clear signal regarding what she called “the failed policies” of President Joe Biden and other Democrats.
“This Republican sweep in Virginia is a resounding rebuke of the failed policies of Joe Biden and the Democrats. Virginians— and Americans across the country—are fed up with Biden’s divisive policies, failed leadership, and a Democrat agenda hurting working families,” McDaniels said.
The RNCC leader also predicted a GOP “wave” during next year’s midterms, calling Virginia “just the start.”
“A Republican wave is coming in 2022, and Virginia is just the start,” McDaniels added.
The committee’s Twitter account also proclaimed the Virginia victories as a taste of what the 2022 midterms will bring.
“Republicans WON BIG up and down the ballot on Tuesday and will carry this momentum into the 2022 midterms,” the committee said on Twitter Wednesday morning.
McAuliffe conceded the race early Wednesday morning, offering a statement to congratulate Youngkin.
“While last night we came up short, I am proud that we spent this campaign fighting for the values we so deeply believe in. We must protect Virginia’s great public schools and invest in our students. We must protect affordable health care coverage, raise the minimum wage faster, and expand paid leave so working families have a fighting shot,” McAuliffe said.
“We must protect voting rights, protect a woman’s right to choose, and, above all else, we must protect our democracy. While there will be setbacks along the way, I am confident that the long term path of Virginia is toward inclusion, openness, and tolerance for all,” he added.
His statement thanked Youngkin, as well as his family and supporters who stood by him through the campaign.
“Congratulations to Governor-Elect Glenn Youngkin on his victory. I hope Virginians will join me in wishing the best to him and his family.
“I would like to thank my wife Dorothy, my family, and my incredible campaign team for their tireless efforts and dedication over these past eleven months. And to all of my supporters across Virginia who knocked on millions of doors, made countless phone calls, and talked to their family, friends, and neighbors: I am eternally grateful that you joined me on this journey to move Virginia forward.
“Serving as Virginia’s 72nd governor was the highest honor of my life, and I will never stop fighting to make our Commonwealth stronger and brighter for all.”
Lawmakers say Virginia election results show parents want government out of schools
After education issues proved crucial to Republicans’ upset victories in Virginia, GOP lawmakers are turning their attention to Democratic plans to put the federal government in charge of education.
Buried in the $3.5 trillion Build Back Better Act is a plan to nationalize preschool programs and place them under the direction of the Education Department. The bill would require governors to submit learning standards for preschoolers for the secretary of education’s approval, which detractors say would further the Biden administration’s reach into public schools across the country.
According to Rep. Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.), the plan to increase federal oversight of preschools is a natural extension of Democrats’ “far-left socialist tax and spending spree.”
“It gives the Biden administration complete control to approve the early education standards being taught to three to four years olds,” Stefanik said at a roundtable Wednesday hosted by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.). She pointed to Virginia governor-elect Glenn Youngkin’s (R.) successful appeal to parents to show that the Biden administration is “out of touch” with what Americans want in schools.
The Biden administration has repeatedly tried to extend federal control over public education. The Education Department in April proposed a rule to prioritize federal funding for education groups that help schools create lessons for elementary students based on “antiracism” and the New York Times‘s controversial 1619 Project. The Washington Free Beacon reported last month that the White House communicated with the National School Boards Association before the group petitioned the Justice Department to investigate concerned parents, whom it likened to “domestic terrorists.”
Stefanik also noted that Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona in September refused to say whether parents were a “primary stakeholder” in their children’s education. The round table discussion was focused on the Biden administration’s attempts to keep parents out of children’s education. Also present were Republican representatives Virginia Foxx (N.C.), Julia Letlow (La.), and Burgess Owens (Utah).
Foxx slammed Democrats for focusing on radical social issues rather than falling test scores.
“If you have a federal takeover of education, what you’re going to have is drag queen story hour instead of a math one,” she said.
Some speakers at Wednesday’s event seemed buoyed by Youngkin’s win over Democratic nominee and former governor Terry McAuliffe, who drew ire for saying parents shouldn’t have a say in what their children learn.
“It’s just the clear optics that McAuliffe had Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation for Teachers union, at his final rally. And then he lost,” Ginny Gentiles, a school choice advocate said. “That is very clear evidence that that power was surpassed by the power of parents who want something different.”
Still, Parents Defending Education founder Nicki Neily warned that Youngkin’s victory will not stop Democrats from attempting to radicalize education.
“As we saw in the House and Senate Judiciary oversight hearings, I do not think they will be walking this back. We are seeing them double down,” Neily said.
None of Virginia’s Democratic representatives responded to a Free Beacon inquiry regarding their stance on the education items in the legislation.
The Build Back Better Act has hit repeated snags on the way to the House floor. Whether or not it comes to a vote, however, Stefanik says the reconciliation bill misses the mark.
“Today’s Democratic Party believes that the government knows better than parents when it comes to what is right for their kids,” Stefanik said. “We know that is not a message that resonates with America.”
A group of House Republicans are demanding answers from all 93 U.S. attorneys about what steps they have taken since the U.S. Department of Justice issued a memo directing them to potentially crack down on parental protests.
“We are continuing to investigate the troubling attempts by the Department of Justice and the White House to use the heavy hand of federal law enforcement to target concerned parents at local school board meetings and chill their protected First Amendment activity,” the Republicans said in a letter (pdf) sent on Monday to every U.S. attorney in all 50 states and territories.
The DOJ memo, which sparked much controversy since its Oct. 4 release, directs the FBI and U.S. Attorneys’ Offices to “convene meetings” with state and local governments to address an alleged “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence” against teachers and school leaders.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garlandlater revealed at a congressional hearing that his department issued the memo after communicating with the White House about a letter from the National School Boards Association (NSBA). The NSBA letter characterized disruptions at school board meetings as “a form of domestic terrorism and hate crime,” and urged the Biden administration to invoke counter-terrorism laws to handle “angry mobs” of parents seeking to hold school officials accountable for teaching the Marxist-inspired critical race theory and for imposing COVID-19 restrictions on their children.
“Concerned parents voicing their strong opposition to controversial curricula at local schools are not domestic terrorists,” the Republicans said, adding that state and local authorities are already equipped with legal tools in case any parent actually crosses the line to commit a violent act.
Although the NSBA has apologized for the letter which the DOJ memo was based on, Garland has yet to rescind the order, meaning that his directives to U.S. Attorneys are still in effect, the Republicans said.
They further noted that during Garland’s testimony before the House, “he appeared to have no idea whether the U.S. Attorney meetings he ordered were actually taking place.”
Specifically, the Republicans demand that the U.S. attorneys provide a trove of information, including all documents and communications related to convening meetings in their respective judicial districts in response to Garland’s memo, and the names of all individual employees involved and organizations that were invited to or attended such meetings.
The U.S. attorneys will have until Nov. 15 to hand in those materials.
The letter was co-signed by 19 Republican members of Congress, including Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee.
If Republican Glenn Youngkin’s upset momentum carries him to victory in the Virginia race for governor, he’ll have voters like Saundra Davis to thank.
Davis, described by Fox News as a “lifelong Democrat,” appeared “Fox & Friends First” on Tuesday to describe how former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, had alienated Old Dominion voters.
And set the stage for a political showdown in Virginia that could stop President Joe Biden’s agenda in its tracks.
Simply put, Davis said, McAuliffe — a confidant of Bill and Hillary Clinton — had taken the governor’s race for granted.
By contrast, she said, the Youngkin campaign has made education issues, a concern of parents everywhere, a key part of its strategy.
“I have a whole group of Dems for Glenn, and when people hear that they think that we’re Russian trolls or dark propaganda, but we’re real parents,” Davis said.
“And Terry McAuliffe thought he would stroll into Virginia and take this election easily, and when he figured out that he wasn’t going to, he kept bringing in more and more outsiders. But Glenn kept listening to parents. He didn’t need outside help, he was himself, and here we are. Today is the big day.”
Tuesday isn’t just a big day in the Commonwealth of Virginia, where the polls were set to close at 7 p.m. Eastern.
Coming a year after Biden won the state by 10 points in the presidential election, election day in Virginia is being viewed as a referendum on the Biden administration so far.
Considering that that administration has been a disaster from literally its first day — when Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline and issued the first of a series of executive orders aimed at overturning the rational approach former President Donald Trump used to impose order on the southern border — a referendum that turned into a rebuke would be richly deserved on any number of fronts.
But for Davis and voters like her, the key issue is the arrogance shown by McAuliffe — and his party as a whole — when it comes to the elemental issue of public school education. And if the Virginia vote goes against McAuliffe, Republicans would be wise to remember that lesson in the 2022 midterms.
Virginia, of course, has become ground zero in a national cultural battle over parents’ rights to oversee their children’s schooling.
During a gubernatorial debate, McAuliffe set himself up as the spokesman for the progressive establishment asserting its dominance when he declared:
“I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decision. I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”
As it turns out, a lot of parents think they should have a say. After watching public schools being used as pawns by teachers unions in the coronavirus pandemic, and the persecution of parents opposed to school district policies on transgender students and the graphic contents of some of the literature being made available to their children, they decided it was time to fight back.
“Because we put our children first, and when the schools were closed, we started watching the school board meetings and we started trying to make comments,” Davis told “Fox & Friends First.”
“And we tried to start presenting them with science to reopen the schools and they ignored us, mocked us, made the time shorter that we were able to speak at these meetings, and we weren’t having it. We’re not having it.”
“We’re not having it” sums up the attitude of millions of American voters to the actions of the Biden administration so far. (Possibly even better than the more-rambunctious “Let’s go Brandon” slogan currently making the rounds of politics and song.)
“We’re not having” a country where millions of illegal immigrants can enter with impunity. “We’re not having” a country that by right is the leader of the free world taking the role of international embarrassment instead.
“We’re not having” an economy that is slipping further and further from the heights it enjoyed under the Trump administrations thanks to a series of self-inflicted wounds created by a leftist Democratic ascendancy.
That’s the message of opposition to McAuliffe and other Democrats on the ballot on Tuesday. (New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy is also up for re-election.)
Youngkin’s strength has been growing in recent polls, and if it carries him across the finish line, it’s going to be disenchanted Democrats who are going to be the key — the “secret weapon” of the Youngkin campaign.
A Republican victory in Virginia would ripple far beyond the state’s borders, delivering the message that Americans unhappy with the direction of the Biden administration are more than willing to flex their muscles at the ballot box to prove it.
But the fact that the race is as close as it is sends a message all by itself.
Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton spoke out Tuesday after Attorney General Merrick Garland refused to meet his deadline to provide answers regarding a memo to the FBI to investigate parents.
Cotton made the comments on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” with host Bill Hemmer.
“We’re going to demand answers,” Cotton said.
“[Garland] responded in just four intervening days from the time the National School Board Association sent him this outrageous letter accusing parents expressing their opinions at school board meetings of being domestic terrorists.”
“We’re going to demand answers.” @SenTomCotton comments after AG Merrick Garland misses Senate Republicans’ deadline to provide evidence to support his memo to investigate “threats” by parents against school boards @BillHemmerpic.twitter.com/uoipCfx6qH
“That’s a land speed record for the government, Bill. As you can probably imagine, these bureaucrats can’t restock the coffee in the pantry in four days, much less issue a nationwide directive siccing the feds on parents who are concerned about their kids’ education,” he added.
Cotton called the situation an obvious act of collusion.
“What happened here is obvious. The National School Board Association in concert with political hacks and the Department of Justice and the White House colluded in advance to issue this letter,” Cotton said.
Should Merrick Garland resign?
“The Department of Justice knew it was coming, and then they sicced the feds on parents. That’s why Merrick Garland should be resigning in disgrace.”
Cotton revealed that the National School Boards Association’s letter has now been repudiated.
“All he’s ever cited is the school board letter and unspecified news reports. I suspect the news reports are the ones cited in the School Boards letter, which the School Board Association has now repudiated, and which used such discredited examples as the parent in Loudoun County, who was angry when his doctor had been raped in a bathroom by a boy dressed as a girl,” Cotton noted.
“The school board then covered it up, because they didn’t want it to interfere with their transgender policy and Pride month. And even more amazingly, they transferred the perpetrator to another school where he assaulted another girl, all because it would have interfered with their woke agenda.”
The news also follows a letter last week sent by a group of 19 Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee to Garland demanding he rescind the memorandum sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation targeting parents at school board meetings.
The letter came after Garland appeared before the House Judiciary Committee last week.
“Your testimony before the Judiciary Committee last week concerning your October 4, 2021, memorandum targeting concerned parents at school board meetings was troubling,” the Republicans’ letter read.
#BREAKING: Judiciary Republicans demand Attorney General Garland withdraw school board memo.
“You acknowledged that you issued the unusual directive soon after reading about the thinly sourced letter sent by the National School Boards Association (NSBA) to President Biden and not because of any specific request from state or local law enforcement,” they added.
A photograph of a man wearing a Confederate flag patch on a denim jacket at a Glenn Youngkin rally in Loudoun County is going viral as left-wing “reporters” shared the image as risible evidence of Confederate sympathies, while Youngkin supporters pointed out the strange behavior of the man with his apparel.
The image was taken from behind the man, who stood directly in front of the press risers as reporters took pictures, before disappearing when people began to realize what he was doing.
The patch appears to be brand new, as is the jacket itself, fueling assumptions that the man was a Democratic Party plant attempting to create negative press for the Youngkin team as Virginia headed to the polls.
A new video appeared online Tuesday, confirming the suspicions of many.
The man repeatedly attempts to position himself in front of the cameras before bailing out of the act when someone realizes what he is doing. They try to cover his patch with a campaign sign, after which he leaves.
So, Confederate denim guy repeatedly attempts to position himself in front of the cameras before scarpering when someone realises what he’s doing… pic.twitter.com/CiEYtOc8rJ
Social media users were also quick to point out that none of the reporters attempted to talk to, let alone interview the man standing two foot away from them and their cameras.
The original image was posted by Gary Grumbach of NBC. A multitude of other journalists followed his lead, posting their own images of the man in question. Mike Valerio of WUSA (a CBS affiliate) also posted an almost-identical photograph of the jacket and flag. No one in the media took a photograph of the front of the man’s face.
Last week, Democrats sent five staffers to pose as white supremacists at a Youngkin campaign event in Charlottesville. The group carried tiki torches, attempting to evoke memories of a march at the University of Virginia in 2017. The stunt was short-lived, weakly executed, and quickly outed as a disgusting attempt to dissuade voters from supporting Youngkin.
Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott sent a letter to Dan Troxell, executive director of the Texas Association of School Boards, on Monday demanding the state protect children from being exposed to pornography or other inappropriate content in Texas public schools.
The letter was also sent to Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath, State Board of Education Chairman Keven Ellis and State Library and Archives Commission Chairwoman Martha Wong.
“A growing number of parents of Texas students are becoming increasingly alarmed about some of the books and other content found in public school libraries that are extremely inappropriate in the public education system,” the governor wrote in the letter.
“The most flagrant examples include clearly pornographic images and substance that have no place in the Texas public education system. You have an obligation to Texas parents and students to ensure that no child in Texas is exposed to pornography or other inappropriate content while inside a Texas public school,” Abbott added.
NEW: Calling on the Texas Association of School Boards to shield children from pornography, inappropriate content in Texas public schools. https://t.co/ZgErC44j0A
Noting that “parents are rightfully angry,” he said, “Parents have the right to shield their children from obscene content used in schools their children attend. They are right that Texas public schools should not provide or promote pornographic or obscene material to students.”
Republican state Rep. Jeff Cason sent a similar statement Friday, saying that “the State of Texas was awakened to the fact that there are school districts that have sexually explicit books in their libraries.”
Cason specifically addressed a book called “Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe.
“This book touches on subjects that are not appropriate for school libraries and may even be criminal for its representation of minors participating in sexual activities,” he said.
Cason asked the state’s Republican attorney general to look into the matter.
“I am calling on Attorney General Ken Paxton to start a state wide investigation into this book and others that may violate the Penal Code in relation to pornography, child pornography and decency laws, as well as the legal ramifications to school districts that approve of these types of books,” he said.
Republican state Rep. Matt Krause has asked for an even more detailed investigation. In a report on Oct. 25, The Texas Tribune discussed a 16-page letter from Krause to the Texas Education Agency demanding a look at about 850 books.
School districts have been divided so far regarding how to respond. Keller Independent School District removed a book after concerns from parents, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Some have viewed the actions as politically motivated.
Krause is running to unseat Paxton in the Republican primary for attorney general.
His list also expanded beyond claims of indecent reading material, targeting books dealing with critical race theory.
We’ve all heard the story about the panicked mom summoning superhuman strength to lift a car off her trapped child. I’m not sure if it’s ever really happened, but I am sure that any politician who interferes with a mother’s ability to raise her children with the values she sees fit is playing with fire. The Democrats are holding the matches. Of all the radical ideas they’ve been trying to foist on America, messing with parents on K-12 education may be the one that does them in.
Democratic politicians have repeatedly failed to stand up to the “woke” crowd, the activist radical left wing of their own party. Remember the open borders question in the 2019 Democratic presidential primary debates? The moderators asked all the candidates to raise their hand if they wanted to decriminalize illegal border crossings. Almost every Democratic candidate raised a hand. Joe Biden was elected and took apart the Trump-era border policies that were working, and we now have record high levels of illegal border crossings and record low levels of arrests. Polls now show that opening the southern border isn’t actually popular with regular Americans, and now it looks as if the Biden administration may be walking back its radical open-border position. Most prominently, the White House has announced plans to begin reinstating Trump’s successful “Remain in Mexico” policy.
Democratic politicians around the country got caught up in the “defund the police” movement as well. It’s hard to find something crazier than open borders, but getting rid of police is a new level. Are there police abuses? Do we need police reform? The answer is, of course, yes. But only a crazy person thinks getting rid of the police is a real answer. Now that crime is going up, Democratic politicians across the country are starting to reverse course.
These are clearly wacky ideas. It’s hard to imagine the thought process that caused leading Democrats to promote them. Regardless, Democratic politicians’ unwillingness to stand up to the insanity in their own party has clearly hurt them in the polls. Hispanic voters, independents and even suburban moms are getting turned off by the ideological, radical strain driving the agenda. It seems that even after scalding their hands on the hot stove, Democrats are coming back for more punishment. This time, they are helping the radicals screw around with children’s education.
The things happening in American schools are truly scary. Despite the left’s desire to keep it quiet and the liberal media’s desire to whitewash it, parents are catching on — and they are not happy.
On race, school districts around the country are normalizing racism. Corporate media will tell you otherwise. The New York Times asserted definitively just this morning that “conservatives have … falsely claimed” divisive critical race theory is bleeding into schools. You’ll find similar gaslighting at NBC, The Washington Post and several other left-wing media companies.
Meanwhile, a teacher in New York City made headlines when he complained about students and teachers being broken up by race for “anti-racism” training, wherein they were taught that “objectivity” and “individualism” were white attributes. A school in Cupertino, California, asked third graders to “deconstruct their racial identities, then rank themselves according to their ‘power and privilege,'” according to City Journal. And, finally, if critical race theorists aren’t trying to indoctrinate children, why is the country’s leading critical race theory guru hocking an “Antiracist Baby” picture book for infants?
There are countless examples. Kids may not be learning the “advanced legal theory” graduate schools offer, but it is clear to anyone who has not had a significant psychological break from reality that these concepts are downstream from that theory, and schools are adopting them.
Contrary to the views espoused by Martin Luther King Jr., these concepts are teaching students that race defines us. They are teaching kids to judge others based on race. As usual with the left, this insanity is packaged to sound nonthreatening. They call it “critical race theory.” You shouldn’t. Just call it racism. That’s all it is.
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a product of the segregated South, most eloquently pushed back on the insanity this week: “One of the worries that I have about the way that we’re talking about race is that it either seems so big that somehow white people now have to feel guilty for everything that happened in the past — I don’t think that’s very productive — or black people have to feel disempowered by race. I would like black kids to be completely empowered, to know that they are beautiful in their blackness, but in order to do that I don’t have to make white kids feel bad for being white.”
That’s all there is to it. That’s America. Outside of the radical left and a few crazy racists on the fringe, most Americans share Rice’s vision. Parents should certainly have the right to instill these American ideals in their children. I wouldn’t want to be the one getting in their way.
The second area of radicalization in our schools concerns the LGBTQ agenda. Two recent headlines highlight the insanity in our schools going on in the name of tolerance. First, in Loudoun County, Virginia, a young girl was allegedly sexually assaulted by a male student with a skirt on in a female bathroom. The school district allegedly attempted to cover up the assault and instead arrested the young girl’s father when his complaints were viewed as endangering the school’s bathroom policies. Second, teachers in Broward County, Florida, brought elementary school kids to a gay bar for a field trip. There are so many things wrong with this. Who takes elementary school kids to any bar for a field trip? Who thinks teaching kids that young any of this in school makes sense in the first place? It’s literally insane.
Democrats may have made mistakes on the border and with policing, but there’s a good chance that the school issues dwarf even those within the electorate. Parents have the right to teach their children their own values. That’s a concept almost everyone agrees with. Yet, to date, the Biden administration’s only response to parents’ growing concerns was a Justice Department memorandum that equated concerned parents with domestic terrorists. That’s a decision they are very likely going to regret.
![Virginia Republican gubernatorial nominee Glenn Youngkin gestures during a [Loudoun Parents Matter Rally] campaign event in Leesburg, Virginia, on Nov. 1, 2021.](https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2021/11/640/320/GLENN-YOUNGKIN-RALLY-IN-VIRGINIA-THUMBS-UP.jpg?ve=1&tl=1)
